ANNE BENNETT
A Strong Hand to Hold

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Copyright © Anne Bennett 1999

First published in paperback in 1999 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

Cover photographs © Gordon Crabb/Alison Eldred (woman); Doreen Kilfeatner/Trevillion Images (girl); Mary Evans Picture Library (houses); Shutterstock.com (airplanes, hand)

Anne Bennett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007547760

Ebook Edition © July 2014 ISBN: 9780007547777

Version: 2017-09-08

Dedication

This book publishes in August 2014, the same month that my youngest daughter, Tamsin, gets married, so this book is dedicated with much love to Tamsin and Mark. xxx

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

ONE
Birmingham, November 1940

‘Now are you all right, Mother?’ Jenny O’Leary asked, placing the breakfast tray with the pot of tea and toast spread with the last of the jam ration across her mother’s knees as she sat before the fire.

Norah looked at her daughter with a pained expression – the one Jenny was well used to. The older woman’s furrowed brow caused deep lines to run down her face; the bun into which she had made Jenny scrape her grey hair appeared tighter than ever; and her mouth was set in a thin line. Ignoring the question, she whined, ‘The house is perishing. Put some more coal on the fire.’

Jenny suppressed a sigh, knowing she’d be late for work if she didn’t get going soon. ‘It won’t help to put more coal on, Mother,’ she said, tucking the blanket around Norah’s legs as she spoke. ‘What’s there will burn up in a minute and warm the place, and you know we have to be careful with it.’

She knew her mother wouldn’t believe her. The war was now fourteen months old, and despite Norah having four sons and a son-in-law in the fighting line, she still seemed to think a world war shouldn’t affect her life at all. Before Norah was able to make a reply, Jenny’s grandmother Eileen Gillespie came in from the kitchen.

‘Shouldn’t you be on your way?’ she snapped at Jenny. ‘Go on, I’ll see to your mother.’

But suddenly there was a knock on the door. Jenny raised her eyes to the ceiling. Who on earth would call at this hour? They weren’t expecting any parcels.

When Jenny saw the telegraph boy with the buff telegram in his outstretched hand, for a moment she couldn’t move. Her head swam and she fought against the nausea that rose in her throat. She had the urge to thrust it back at the boy, refuse to accept it, as if not to read that one of her brothers was killed or missing would mean it was untrue – a mistake.

Instead, she found herself not only taking it from him, but thanking him before she shut the door. She stood with the thing in her hand, shaking so much she couldn’t open it. Her grandmother, coming into the hall to see who’d knocked, found Jenny sitting on the stairs, arms around her legs while shudders ran through her whole body.

Eileen’s face blanched white at the sight of the crumpled telegram in Jenny’s hand and she grasped the door jamb for support as she said, almost in a whisper, ‘Who?’

Jenny shook her head mutely and Eileen grabbed the telegram from her and ripped it open. ‘Dear God!’ she wailed. ‘It’s Anthony!’

‘Missing?’ Jenny asked, and she silently cried out to the Almighty to give her some vestige of hope.

But her grandmother shook her head and went into the living room to break the news to her daughter. A howl of agony escaped from Jenny. A hard knot settled in her heart and sent spasms of pain through every part of her body; and although she cried out at the acuteness of it, her eyes stayed dry and she wondered, bleakly, how she’d get through the rest of her life without her beloved brother.

She hardly felt the cold of the hall seeping into her as she sat on the stairs, hugging her knees and listening to her mother’s sobs from the living room and trying to come to terms with the devastating news. Anthony had been in the RAF for just five months, as he’d joined on his eighteenth birthday in mid-June. By then, the true cost of lives lost in Dunkirk was common knowledge and most people knew that just a small stretch of water separated the UK from German armies, and for the first time in many years, the British faced the possibility of invasion and subsequent defeat.

Anthony had been desperate to join up. Knowing the fight to protect Britain would come from the air, he’d soon tired of the Home Guard which he’d joined when war was declared, and where he’d trained with broomsticks, with just a black armband to show he was in any official capacity at all.

Jenny remembered it so well, the day he’d got his wish; he’d stood before her in Air Force blue, his hat at a jaunty angle and the light of excitement dancing in his eyes. And though Jenny was bursting with pride, her stomach had contracted in fear for his safety.

For just a few short weeks, all the time the RAF could spare to train their fighter pilots, Anthony was stationed with the 605 Squadron in Castle Bromwich, not so far away. Meanwhile ‘The Battle of Britain’ had raged in the skies. Jenny read all the news reports. The papers used the number of enemy planes lost in comparison to the British as if it were a score at rugby. Nineteen to four, or fifteen to seven, they’d claim. She doubted the accuracy of the British losses and presumed it was done to boost morale, which she found distasteful. War was no game and every pilot lost belonged to someone.

And far, far too soon, Anthony had become a part of it, stationed in a unspecified airfield in the South. Now Jenny began to pray in earnest for her youngest brother, for while she worried and prayed about the rest of her family, she knew that her younger brother in particular faced mortal danger on a daily basis.

However, by the end of September, ‘The Battle of Britain’ was over, the Allies were victorious and Britain safe once more from invasion. Anthony had been home on leave for a few days. Now, just two short months later, he was dead. Jenny let out a long, shuddering groan.

She got to her feet, shivering, and went into the living room, where her mother seemed awash with tears; Eileen Gillespie held her daughter pressed to her breast. Jenny would have welcomed comforting arms around her, but she knew that would never happen. Anyway, there were practical things to do, and she seemed the only one able to deal with them. She first had to phone the Dunlop where she worked as a typist, and then see her sister Geraldine and her sister-in-law Jan, the wife of her eldest brother Seamus, to tell them the tragic news.

She didn’t want to see the priest – she felt God had let her down – but her grandmother said Norah needed him to visit and so she made herself go that afternoon. Geraldine and her small son Jamie were installed in the house by then, for Geraldine said she was worried how the news of Anthony’s death would affect Mother with her delicate state of health.

As Jenny went down Holly Lane to the priest’s house, she wondered for the thousandth time why the whole family went on with the pretence that her mother was some sort of invalid. Norah O’Leary was nothing of the sort, and if she knew so must they – but Jenny had only ever spoken about it with Anthony. For years it had been the same, and Norah had kept her husband Dermot dancing attendance on her because of it.

When he’d breathed his last, in the spring of 1939, Jenny had known with fearful trepidation that she, as the only unmarried daughter, would be expected to take over from her father. The prospect filled her with dread, for she knew her mother didn’t like her that much – and to be truthful, she wasn’t that keen on her mother either!

She had hoped the war might postpone the grim prospect she saw before her, but when she suggested giving up her job and joining the WAAFs, the family were loud in their condemnation. Only Anthony told her to go for it. More than once, he and Jenny had glimpsed their mother through the window walking around with no apparent stiffness and without her sticks, and yet when they entered the house later, they would see her sitting in her chair, covered with a blanket, complaining of the agony she was in.

Norah O’Leary was a fraud, and both her younger children knew it. Jenny remembered how Anthony had told her to drop the charade the others practised. ‘For God’s sake,’ he’d said, ‘stand up to Mother before it’s too late.’

‘Oh, it’s all right for you,’ Jenny had cried. ‘You’re a man. You’ll soon be out of it.’

‘So could you be,’ Anthony had pointed out. ‘Join up, if that’s what you want. Mother’s not helpless and Geraldine only lives up the road.’

But it had been no good. Jenny had been unable to withstand them all telling her how selfish and inconsiderate she was and how she should know where her duty lay. She supposed she’d scored a minor victory though in refusing to give up her job when Geraldine had suggested it.

‘How will you cope?’ her elder sister had asked.

True, in the beginning it had been hard dealing with her mother and the housework as well as her job. Previously her father had seen to many of Norah’s needs; now there was just Jenny to do everything. She’d been glad Anthony was too young to join up with his elder brothers straight away, for she’d depended on him a lot and they’d grown closer still. Yet however hard it had been, and still was, Jenny knew that if she’d been with her mother day in, day out, she’d not have been able to stand it.

And how in God’s name was she to stand this latest blow? she thought, as she turned up the garden path of the Presbytery. Who would she confide in now and tell her hopes and dreams to? Who now would deflect her mother’s anger and comfort Jenny when Norah had reduced her to tears yet again. Jenny’s eyes misted over with misery, but she refused to let any tears fall. She had an idea that once she began crying, she’d never stop – and she had to talk to the priest.

Father O’Malley was very sorry to hear about Anthony. Jenny was not the only one of his parishioners to come to him with similar news, but it wouldn’t be helpful to tell her that. He looked at the girl, so different from her brothers and sisters in both looks and build, and saw the sorrow in her eyes. He knew, as many did, how close the two younger O’Leary children were, for there was a largish gap between them and the others. Now the girl must be twenty or so. He remembered the time before her birth when Norah had come to see him and asked him to speak to her husband, who she’d said had forced himself upon her. She was pregnant again because of it and she didn’t want the child: Francis her youngest had been six and she’d thought four children enough for anyone.

Of course he could do nothing for the woman, but tell her firmly that she had to be grateful for any children that God sent her. He also said that it was not a woman’s place to refuse the husband to whom she had promised obedience in the marriage ceremony. Dermot, he’d said, had rights. And he must have insisted upon them – for Anthony had been born just two years after Jenny. Altogether the priest thought Norah O’Leary had had little to moan about in those days, with a fine handsome family and Dermot able and willing to work all the hours God sent to provide for them and not spend it all in the pub. Not all women were as lucky. Of course, her disability would have been hard to bear, he could understand that, and then to lose Dermot had been a big blow. Her children would have been a fine consolation for her, if the damned war hadn’t taken the young men of the family away. Thank God, he thought, she still had the girls – and Geraldine, now married, was still near at hand.

Father O’Malley had liked young Anthony. He’d been a fine boy, like his brothers before him. As mischievous as the next, though – not averse to taking the odd sip of Communion wine when he was serving on the altar, or filling his water pistol with holy water, as he recalled. But that was boys for you. The priest sighed. He’d have to go up and see Norah and try to offer the poor woman some comfort.

On the way home, Jenny decided to go to her Gran O’Leary’s, for she knew no one else would bother to tell the old lady about Anthony. Norah herself hated her mother-in-law. Not that she was a great one for liking people generally, but she really seemed to loathe Maureen O’Leary. She called her fat and common, and said she’d only put up with her on sufferance while her husband was alive, and now that Dermot was dead, she refused to have anything more to do with her.

Jenny didn’t care if her Gran O’Leary was common, but the woman her mother described scathingly as ‘fat’ Jenny herself would have called ‘cuddly’. Her lap was just the right size for a child to snuggle into, in order to lean against her soft and very ample breasts, while her plump arms were the most comfortable and comforting pillow Jenny had ever known. Maureen O’Leary always had an apron tied around her waist and her feet were encased in men’s socks, especially during the winter, with downtrodden slippers or old boots on top. Jenny didn’t care either that her gran cursed and swore a bit and hadn’t had the benefit of a decent education, Gran O’Leary was the only woman who’d ever shown her any love in her young life. She could never remember her own mother giving her a cuddle, or tucking her up in bed at night.

But then, as her Gran said, you couldn’t make people what they were not and she had to accept that. Jenny knew her Gran had loved Anthony, and it was right that she should be informed about his death; the four eldest O’Leary children had little or nothing to do with old Mrs O’Leary, because Norah had wanted it that way. Jenny thought it a shame, especially as she’d had so much to do with them all when they’d been small, but Maureen had never complained – at least not to Jenny. She’d once told her that Dermot had had very little influence over his elder children because he’d been away so much. First the Great War had claimed him, and then, once they’d come to England, he’d had to find work and money enough to support his mother’s family as well as his own.

Dermot had become a driver in the armament factory his uncle worked in, and had taken on any number of contracts to earn the money he needed. Maureen told Jenny that once he’d left the house, he might not come back into it for a week. That was how it came about that Norah and her mother, Eileen Gillespie, had the rearing and ruination of Jenny’s older brothers and sister.

However, it was all water under the bridge, now. Her brothers and sister were grown up and could make their own decisions – yet they never went to see their gran though she lived but two streets away, in Westmead Crescent.

That afternoon, Maureen O’Leary took one look at the anguished eyes of her granddaughter and drew her into her arms. She wept as Jenny gave her the news. She cursed Hitler and the whole German army and the German nation, and Jenny lay against her and wondered why she still couldn’t cry.

Even her gran’s lodger Peggy McAllister was upset when she heard of Anthony’s death. The McAllisters were friends of her gran who lived in Ward End and when the family had been bombed out in August, Maureen offered their eldest girl Peggy a temporary home with her. Since then Peggy had become friendly with Jenny, and she had even met Anthony when he’d visited his gran on his short leave in late September.

‘It could have been our Mick,’ she said to Jenny. ‘He’s desperate to join the RAF and he’s eighteen just after Christmas. It’ll break Mammy’s heart if anything happens to him.’

‘It isn’t only the servicemen though, is it?’ Maureen said, dabbing her eyes. ‘I mean, your whole family could have been killed in the raid that blew up your house. Those poor Londoners are getting it every night, and hundreds killed there.’

‘It’s happening all over the country,’ Jenny said. ‘And the Coventry raid five days ago that killed over fifteen hundred people and injured many more will at least put paid to the stupid people who think being two hundred miles from the coast is some sort of deterrent. I think, and so do many more, that we will be next. All our defences have been stepped up. I’m on duty tonight, as it happens.’

‘Och, girl, they’ll understand if you go down and explain,’ Maureen said tearfully. ‘They’d not expect you in tonight if you tell them about Anthony.’

Jenny shook her head. ‘I’d rather not just sit and think,’ she said. ‘God knows, there’ll be time enough for that – and Anthony wouldn’t want me to stay away, especially if there should be a heavy raid tonight.’

Maureen didn’t press her granddaughter further, but Jenny knew it wouldn’t be so easy for her to convince the ones at home. ‘I’ll have to be going anyway,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘They’ll all be sitting there waiting for me to make their tea.’

‘I must be away too,’ Peggy said, ‘or they’ll be handing me my cards.’

Peggy worked the night shift at BSA – Birmingham Small Arms – in Armoury Road, making Browning guns for Spitfires, and it was one hell of a trek from Pype Hayes out there every evening. Maureen secretly thought the reason she stayed on with them and didn’t look for something nearer, was because she was sweet on her son Gerry, and Gerry certainly more than liked her. In fact, Maureen thought, Peggy would be hard to dislike as she was lovely to look at with her thick hair so dark it was nearly black, and eyes to match, and her full mouth in her heart-shaped face. But best of all was her kindly nature and sense of humour. Maureen would welcome the girl as a daughter-in-law, for Gerry was thirty-three and a fine age to marry, but he was too shy to speak his mind to the girl. Maureen thought him a fool and hoped he wouldn’t dally too long, or someone else would snap the girl up.

Jenny knew what was in her gran’s mind, but her own was still full of her brother, and as she made her way back to the house, she wondered why she didn’t look in the least bit like him. Like his three brothers and Geraldine too, Anthony had had deep brown eyes and hair, a nice-shaped nose and mouth, and flawless skin. The boys were all acknowledged as handsome and Geraldine known as a stunner.

Jenny’s face was longer than theirs and went to a point at her chin, and though her eyes were brown, they were much lighter than the other O’Learys’. Her nose had no shape to it at all and was powdered with hideous freckles, and her mouth was too big and her lips too thick. But worst of all was the mop of auburn curls that refused to lie flat, or be tamed in any way. She was plain if not downright ugly – and if she’d had any doubts about it, Norah O’Leary would have dispelled them, for all the years of her growing up, she’d told her how ugly she was.

Not, in fact, that she’d grown up very much, for while the boys all touched on six foot and Geraldine was a willowy five foot six like her mother and other grandmother, Jenny was just five foot. She’d grown till she was about twelve, then stopped, and she had few womanly curves and little bust. In fact, she looked more like a young boy than a young woman, especially when she wore the trousers that women were finding so comfortable and practical these days.

Even her sister had said she’d be left on the shelf if she didn’t make the most of the few attributes she had – and indeed, there had never been anyone killed in the rush to take Jenny O’Leary out.

Now though, Norah was pleased that Jenny had turned out plain. As the only unmarried daughter, she’d spend her lifetime looking after her; it wasn’t as if she’d ever have a better offer. Norah considered she’d had a miserable life since she consented to marry that oaf Dermot O’Leary, but she’d made him pay for it. Now it was Jenny’s turn. She’d always championed him anyway, and even looked like him and all his common relations. Norah knew she would never feel the same about Jenny as she did about her beautiful daughter Geraldine, who’d never argued with her in the whole of her life. There had been just one distressing incident in her teens when she’d been all for marrying someone unsuitable. But Norah had soon put a stop to that. Jenny was a different kettle of fish altogether.

When Jenny returned from her gran’s, it was to hear the priest had already paid the two women a visit. Norah immediately demanded to know where Jenny had been for such a long time; she was furious when she found out. Didn’t Jenny have any thought for her feelings? Surely she knew that Maureen O’Leary was the last person on God’s earth she’d have wanted her to see. ‘Why,’ she asked plaintively, ‘do you take such pleasure in upsetting me and today of all days when I’m trying to come to terms with the death of my son?’

Jenny couldn’t understand her mother. Did she honestly think Gran O’Leary should have been kept in the dark? Anthony was her grandson too, and she had loved him dearly. Surely she had a right to know!

But in this sort of mood, there was no reasoning with Norah, as Jenny knew from bitter experience. She gave a sigh and, deciding she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, told her mother she was on warden duty that night and had no intention of asking to be excused. At first Jenny thought her mother was going to have a fit; naturally, everyone blamed Jenny for the upset. ‘You are unnatural,’ Norah declared, and Jenny could see that the others agreed with her. No one could understand her attitude. Geraldine was still at the house but she couldn’t stay late for she had the children to get to bed. She said she assumed that Jenny would be there that evening to offer their mother some measure of comfort. Jenny gave a grim smile, knowing her mother would never take comfort from her. She was just used as the whipping boy.

It had been Anthony’s idea that she work as an ARP warden or at least that she do something for the war effort. He’d told her about the women working on the shopfloor of factories doing jobs that had once been traditionally male, and of those driving buses and trucks and ambulances, and how proud he was of them all setting to and running the country in the absence of the men. His words had inspired Jenny and, having some knowledge of First Aid, she offered herself as an ARP warden and now reported for duty two evenings a week at the warden post in Tyburn Road.

Norah had then said that if Jenny was going to leave her alone in the evenings, as well as the day, she wanted her mother to move in with them, at least till the end of the war. Jenny disliked her Grandmother Gillespie, for Eileen resembled her daughter Norah in looks and temperament, but there was no point in complaining, Norah would only point out that it was her name on the rent book. Eileen had moved in, and before many weeks had passed, Jenny thought that if she hadn’t had the warden post to escape to, she’d have strangled the pair of them!

She particularly needed to get out that night. Before, she’d always given in to the family and done what they wanted, but not this time. ‘Mother, Anthony would want me to go,’ Jenny said steadily.

‘Oh, you know that, do you, miss?’ Norah sneered.

And suddenly Jenny could almost see Anthony in front of her eyes and hear his voice in her ear. ‘Go on Jen. Stand up to Mother for God’s sake, or she’ll destroy you.’

‘Yes – yes, I do!’ Jenny shouted back at her mother. ‘He gave his life doing what he thought was right, but the war hasn’t finished because Anthony has died. He wouldn’t want us to give up. If there is a raid tonight, more people might be injured and killed. I have to go.’ And then, as her mother made no reply, she lifted her chin defiantly and went on: ‘And I am going, just as soon as I’ve made us all something to eat.’

Norah stared at Jenny. Always before she’d given in under pressure; this was a new tack entirely. ‘Then go,’ she said, ‘though what earthly good you’ll be I don’t know, for you’re as small as a child and about as much use.’

Jenny stared back at her mother for a minute, then turned from her without a word, though she trembled inside as she went into the kitchen to start on the tea. She heard Geraldine call goodbye to her mother and grandmother, completely ignoring her. Jenny told herself she didn’t care; she’d made a stand now and had to stick to it – and the sooner she got the tea over and was on her way, the better she’d feel.

TWO

As Jenny was struggling with the news of her brother’s death, just a couple of streets away on Paget Road, Linda Lennox was looking at her mother Patty Prosser with concern, a frown creasing her brow. ‘Are you sure you’re well enough to get up, Mom?’

Patty looked at her daughter and smiled. She was a good kid, she thought, ‘I can’t stay in bed all my bloody life, now can I?’ she said. ‘The sooner I’m back to work and you back to school the better.’

‘Yeah, but you ain’t gotta rush it. You know what the doc said.’

‘Yeah, I know what he said, and between the two of you I’d be wrapped in cotton wool. Don’t worry, Linda – I’ll have to see how I am when I’m up, won’t I? If it’s too much I promise I’ll go back to bed, but I’m bored bloody solid, and it’s too much trouble and cost to have a fire in the living room and the bedroom.’

‘It ain’t no trouble, Mom, honest,’ Linda protested. ‘The bedroom would be like an ice box without a fire. Dr Sanders said you had to keep warm.’

‘I know, but today I’ll get up and sit by the fire downstairs for a bit, all right?’

‘OK,’ Linda conceded. ‘I’ll make us both a cuppa, eh?’

Patty’s face still looked pasty-white, Linda thought, but at least she wasn’t coughing quite so much any more. She knew what had given her the chest infection; it was that trip to the Bull Ring the previous Saturday to buy her some new shoes. Her mom had already been full of cold. Their good neighbour and friend Beattie Latimer had told her to leave it a while, for the day had been wild, squally and cold, not a day to be going anywhere, but Patty said Linda could wait no longer for shoes. And she couldn’t really. Her summer sandals hurt her toes, they were so small and her pumps didn’t keep her feet warm or dry, despite the cardboard Linda put inside them.

Still, they didn’t have to go as far as town to buy shoes and Linda guessed her mom wanted a gander at the Bull Ring after the bombing raids on it in late August. She did herself, and when Patty had told Beattie not to fuss, it was just a cold, she’d believed her.

They’d had a great day, for much as she loved her two little brothers, George and Harry, Linda enjoyed having her mother to herself at times. And Beattie, despite her disapproval, agreed to mind the two little ones so that they could go together.

They’d both been shocked by the devastation. They’d read about it, of course, and seen pictures in the Evening Mail and the Despatch, but seeing pictures and hearing about it was one thing; being there was quite another. Much of the rubble from inside the shops on the bottom end of High Street down towards the Bull Ring had been cleared over the past weeks and the empty shells of the shops leaned drunkenly one against the other.

At first, the Bull Ring itself had seemed much the same as ever. The bag lady was still there chanting, ‘’andy carriers,’ as she had for as long as Linda could remember, and opposite to her was the man selling Alcazar razor blades. There didn’t seem quite so many barrows though, and the fish stalls were severely depleted. ‘I heard tell they were going to start selling whale meat,’ Patty said. ‘But I can’t see any sign of it.’

‘Ugh,’ Linda had said in disgust. ‘Don’t you go buying any of that.’

‘Now, now. You ain’t never tasted it, so how can you say that,’ Patty had admonished. ‘Any road, you might be glad of it before we’re finished, with all this rationing.’

Linda had doubted she’d ever be that desperate, but wisely didn’t argue further.

She’d always loved the buzz and clamour of the Bull Ring, the mingled smells of the goods on offer, and the chatter and hubbub of the crowds, mixed with the cries of the vendors shouting their wares. Hawkers had been spread about Nelson’s Column, their wares laid out in suitcases with lookout boys on the corners in case any rozzers came that way. Linda knew you had to watch what you bought from hawkers. She’d heard of a woman who’d bought a watch from them for five bob. When she couldn’t get it to go, she took it to a watch repairers, who took the back off and found there was nothing inside. ‘Daft ’aporth she must have been,’ Beattie snorted when she’d told the tale. ‘I’m sure I’d make certain the bloody thing worked before I’d hand over five bob.’

Linda was sure she would too, but she had felt sorry for Thelma Grimshaw, the mother of her best friend Carole, who had once bought a pair of silk stockings at a bargain price from a hawker, only to find there was no foot in one of them! But still, that day the hawkers had been doing a brisk trade. It was mainly black-market stuff and there’d been clusters of people around them, seeing what they had to sell.

The fruit and veg stalls no longer had the array of stuff they’d had before the war. There were no bananas or oranges, just a few piles of mangy-looking apples, some rock-hard pears and small bunches of grapes. There were plenty of potatoes and onions, carrots and swedes and some tired-looking lettuces and small tomatoes, but little else.

However the sight of the Market Hall had taken Linda’s breath away for a moment or two. Open to the sky, it was still a fine old building, and the old lags were still there on the steps with their trays of bootlaces and matches and hair grips. Linda and Patty went up the steps to gaze at it and saw that the people had begun returning. They’d been sheltered from the elements by canvas awnings, the Market Hall had been cleaned up and was now back in business.

Linda remembered Beattie telling them all about it just after the bombs had landed. ‘Bleeding animals running all over the place,’ she had said. ‘God it must have been a sight.’

Linda had felt sorry for the frightened creatures. A visit to Pimm’s Pet Shop was always one of the highlights of any trip to the Bull Ring when she’d been younger. The shop had a wide variety of animals – hamsters, guinea pigs and rabbits, together with adorable kittens or boisterous puppies that nipped playfully with their sharp little teeth. Then there were the birds; she used to spend ages standing in front of the budgies trying to get them to talk. The canaries, she recalled, always sang so beautifully, and occasionally there’d even be a parrot or a mynah bird.

There were no pets now, and the clock the children and many adults had been fascinated by was also gone. There were fewer flower-sellers than before the war, Linda noticed. This came as no surprise. Everyone was digging up their lawns and gardens now to grow vegetables. They had been urged to ‘Dig for Victory’.

She herself couldn’t ever remember having flowers in the house, or growing in the garden. Patty had told her that her father had tended the garden nicely before he got too sick, they’d had vegetables in the back and flowers in the front, and he’d often cut a bunch and bring them into the house for his wife. But eventually he’d grown too ill to see to the garden and Bert Latimer came to mow the lawns. The vegetables and flowers went to seed and died; Ted Prosser, her second husband, never had any interest in it. Linda remembered Patty’s sad face as she’d said that, and she thought if ever she had any spare money, she’d buy a bunch of flowers to cheer her up.

As she followed behind Patty, she saw Jimmy Jesus taking his place by St Martin’s Church. ‘Look, Mom!’

‘He’s early today,’ Patty remarked. ‘Must have plenty to say.’

They’d stood a minute to listen to the old down-and-out with the long white hair and beard that had given him his name. ‘Though your souls be as black as pitch, if you repent of your sinful ways, your soul can be washed cleaner than the whitest snow by the blood of the lamb,’ Jimmy began.

A few hecklers shouted at him from the crowd, but Jimmy Jesus took no notice and opened up his Bible. ‘Oh, Gawd blimey, come on, chuck,’ Patty had urged. ‘I ain’t in the mood for a bloody sermon today.’

Linda followed her mother as she made her way towards the Rag Market, but sneaked a look back at Jimmy Jesus as she went. He’d always fascinated her; though she couldn’t understand all he said, she liked the sound of his voice which was surprisingly gentle and without an accent of any kind.

The Rag Market was used as a fish market through the week and the reek of fish was still there; Linda wrinkled her nose at the smell, but she knew as well as anyone that this was where the bargains were to be found. Sure enough, after a little bit of haggling, Patty had got a pair of stout shoes for Linda costing three bob, as well as plenty of cheap vegetables, a few apples and some fresh fish at a very reasonable price. Patty was pleased with herself and it wasn’t until they were on their way home on the rickety, smoky tram that she’d begun to cough; the next morning, Sunday, Linda phoned for the doctor from the phone box on the corner.

She didn’t mind sending for Dr Sanders now. He’d become a good friend to them all. She remembered the first time she’d gone to see him early in August. Patty had collapsed five days earlier.

Linda told the doctor it was the telegram that had brought it on, but she knew it wasn’t, not really. Linda guessed that her mother was secretly glad when she got the telegram to tell her that her second husband, Edward Prosser, would not be coming home from Dunkirk. He’d been a bully and Linda knew he used to hit her mom. She’d hated Ted Prosser for what he did to Patty and because he was horrible to the boys. There was another reason for hating him too, but she had never breathed a word to her mom about it – wouldn’t ever have to now, ’cos that pig was dead and gone and couldn’t hurt them any more.

However, when Patty had read the letter that came later, she had dropped like a stone to the floor in a dead faint. Dr Sanders had put her condition down to delayed shock and depression, and he prescribed tablets. He hadn’t informed the Welfare Authorities about the family though he knew he should have done. Instead, he’d arranged for a district nurse to call daily until Patty was on her feet. He’d said it was too much for any twelve-year-old, coping with a sick mother as well as the housework and cooking and looking after her two little brothers aged three years and just twelve months, even with the quite considerable help she got from the next-door neighbour.

When Patty recovered, he’d got her a job in Armstrong’s on the Lichfield Road making cartridge cases; he also used his influence to get a place for George and little Harry at the day nursery across the road.

It was great now, Linda thought. Money wasn’t quite so tight; they no longer had to hide from the rent man and could begin to pay the doctor’s bill, though he’d told them there was no rush. It grew better still when Beattie talked her Bert round into letting her take a job too. She’d said she was bored stiff at home with the lads fighting and her daughter married and living in Leeds, and anyway, she wanted to be doing her bit. But it meant that she’d pop in in the morning, help to get the boys ready and help Patty bring them back in the evening. Linda knew they had a lot to thank Beattie for. Even now, with Patty ill again, she’d taken the boys and left them at the nursery on the Monday and that day, Tuesday too, knowing that Linda would have her hands full as it was.

Patty watched her daughter bustling about, getting a meal for the two of them. ‘We’ll put the wireless on later, bab,’ she said. ‘Have a bit of music to cheer us all up.’

They hadn’t had the wireless very long and it was still a novelty. Patty had wanted one at home because they always had ‘Worker’s Playtime’ on at the factory and she loved to sing along to the songs. When any of the girls said how terrific her voice was, she always replied that they should hear her daughter Linda, as hers was even better, and she tried hard to remember the words of the songs to teach Linda in the evening. Then she heard of the ‘never never’ or ‘hire purchase’ scheme where you could make a down payment on a wireless, then pay so much back a week. But oh, the excitement in the house the Saturday it was delivered!

Linda had looked as if Patty had given her the Crown Jewels. ‘Can we afford it, Mom?’

‘Let me worry about that,’ Patty had said. ‘Any road, we need to hear the news, don’t we, or this flipping lot will be invading us and we’ll know nowt about it till the church bells start to ring.’

‘Oh, Mom!’

‘I’m only joking,’ Patty said. ‘But we do need to know what’s happening. If it gets too miserable we can always turn the dial to summat else, eh? They have good plays on, the girls at work were telling me.’

The thing they enjoyed the most was singing together, and they’d join in the old favourites belting out from the wireless. Beattie loved to hear them. Patty and Linda had been singing together ever since Linda was just a nipper, but it had all come to a stop when Patty married Ted Prosser. Didn’t like to hear it, Patty had said. Didn’t like much, if Beattie’s opinion had been asked. Didn’t seem to take to Linda either and resented any closeness between her and her mother. But then he didn’t go great guns for his own babbies either. Funny man altogether and Patty was better off without him, not that she went around telling her like, but she was.

Patty knew what Beattie thought, for even if she said nothing, her face spoke volumes. They’d been neighbours since she’d come on to the estate in 1930. Patty Lennox she’d been then, of course, and she thought she was in heaven getting one of the new houses on the Pype Hayes Estate, after living in one room in a rat-infested house in Aston since her marriage three years previously. She was so proud and kept the place like a new pin. She enjoyed looking after her husband and little girl, and hoped there would be more children to fill the house with their chatter.

However, when she lost her dear husband Billy to TB in 1932, Patty was glad she only had Linda to see to. It was Beattie who’d been her support then and helped her to pull herself together for the sake of her child. Later it was Beattie, too, who minded Linda when Patty did cleaning at the Norton pub. Patty also worked behind the bar a time or two to make ends meet, and that was where she met Ted Prosser. She often rued the day, for the man had hard fists, a vicious temper and a short fuse which grew shorter according to the amount he’d drunk. Added to that, he kept Patty short of money and when he did give her any, often borrowed it back to supplement his beer money.

Patty knew her daughter disliked him and there was something else, a wariness that had always come into Linda’s eyes when they spoke of him; and she never wanted to be left alone with him in the house. Patty had her suspicions, but didn’t know how to raise them with the child. What if she was wrong and put all sorts of ideas in her head? She’d thought Linda would come to her if there had been anything, but she hadn’t. That apart, Patty soon knew she’d made a grave mistake marrying Ted Prosser, one she’d pay for for the rest of her life, because she couldn’t see him agreeing to divorce. When she received word of his death, she felt little grief; her overriding concern was how she’d feed and clothe three children.

But the letter from the corporal told her of a husband she didn’t recognise. He’d given up his place in a boat leaving Dunkirk for the corporal because he’d been injured and lost his life because of it. The corporal said Ted had been a brave fine man and her loss must be a grievous one and he said also he would be recommending him for a bravery award. His description of Ted Prosser bore no resemblance to the bully he’d become to his wife, and Patty knew if she’d glimpsed that brave and selfless soldier the corporal appeared to know, she’d have considered herself proud to be married to him. The fault must have been hers, she told herself. She’d failed to recognise Ted’s good points and had annoyed and frustrated him in some way, so he’d been forced to lash out at her and go to the pub to escape. It had been those feelings that had overwhelmed her. She’d thought she was no good as a wife or a mother and everyone, including the children, would be better off without her. Now she knew that wasn’t true. It was just possible that Ted Prosser would have returned from the war a changed man, but privately she doubted it. What she didn’t doubt was the love she had for her children, and that encouraged her to get better, helped by medication from the doctor.

Linda was relieved that Sunday when the doctor said her mother would soon be up and about again. He said chest infections were rife in the winter and it was nothing to worry about, and she’d soon be back at work. Linda was glad she’d be leaving school herself in a couple of years, for then the money problems would be easier and her Mom might not have to work so hard. One thing she did know was that they didn’t need a man to look after them.

Just once her mother had said, ‘Well, I’ve had two husbands and that’s one too many, but without Ted there would be no George or Harry, and I wouldn’t want to be without them, would you?’

Linda would not. To be without her brothers was unthinkable, but she remembered the times Ted had come home drunk from the pub and the sounds of slaps and punches and the screams of her mother. The next day Patty would host a black eye, split lip, or bruises on her cheek and Linda thought it was a bloody high price to pay.

If her mother stayed up that evening, maybe she could get her to tell her about her real father again, she thought. They’d take the photographs out of the shoebox in the glass-fronted cupboard in the alcove and Linda would study her mother in her wedding dress and the father she could scarcely remember, stiff but smart in a suit anyone could see he was unaccustomed to wearing. There were others – one of him cuddling her in his arms as a baby, and one of him holding her hand in the wilderness of a garden he had eventually tamed, according to her Mom. There were more of them both in the tended garden, pushing her on the swing he’d built for her and another helping to blow out the three candles on the day of her third birthday party. After that she knew he became sick, but when her mother spoke about how much he’d loved Linda and how happy they were together, it often brought a lump to the young girl’s throat. Patty had told Linda how much she missed Billy when he died, and Linda supposed that was why she’d married Ted Prosser. She didn’t ask her, though; she never mentioned the man’s name if she could help it.

She glanced out of the window. Although it wasn’t yet half past two, the dark autumn day had turned dusky and Linda knew she would soon have to attend to the blackout. She loved the cosiness of their house in the winter’s evenings. Once the supper things had been washed and put away and the little ones were in bed, the thick red curtains would be drawn across the bay window cutting off the hated blackout curtains. Then Linda and Patty would sit in front of the fire; Patty could now afford plenty of coal. They’d talk, or listen to the wireless, or play cards, or knit socks and balaclavas for the troops. Tonight, Beattie would be with them as her Bert was on nights at the Dunlop, but Linda didn’t mind that; she liked Beattie.

Suddenly there was a pounding on the door, and Linda opened it to see Beattie herself outside, standing with Harry in the pushchair and George holding on to the handle. ‘Beattie,’ she said in surprise.

‘Let me in, girl, this cold goes through you like a bleeding knife.’

Linda stood aside and Beattie marched into the living room, surprised to see Patty sitting by the fire. ‘What are you doing up?’ she asked.

Patty’s mouth had dropped agape. ‘Never mind me,’ she said. What are you doing home at this time of day?’

Beattie began unstrapping Harry as she explained. ‘Got a call about my sister Vera from the hospital. Silly bugger’s fell down the stairs and broke her leg bad. They’re keeping her in so it mustn’t be straightforward. She’s in the General. She wants me to go and see to their Vicky and her husband Lennie.’

‘Doesn’t she live in Sutton Coldfield?’

‘Yeah,’ Beattie said and added, ‘I hate the bloody place – all kippers, curtains and no drawers. Too bleeding posh for any air raids. And Vicky’s well able to look after herself and see to her dad – she’s a year older than Linda who could do it with her eyes shut. Any road, the doctor said she was getting upset and agitated, so I said to tell her I’ll go. I might then get to see our Vera herself at visiting time this evening.’

‘What a shame,’ Patty said sympathetically.

‘Ah well. My old man will have to look after himself and all,’ Beattie said. ‘I’ll go round and see him in a bit, before he goes down for the night shift.’

‘D’you want a cup of tea, Mrs Latimer?’ Linda asked as she unzipped a squirming Harry from his siren suit and put him down on the floor.

‘Thought you’d never ask, girl,’ Beattie said, pushing the pram out of the way into the hall. ‘Me tongue’s hanging out. And what’s your Ma doing up out of bed?’

‘You’d better ask her,’ Linda said, making for the kitchen with George behind her, his teddy bear, Tolly, trailing after him. He’d had Tolly since he was a baby and though he knew he couldn’t take the toy to the nursery, it went everywhere else and it was the first thing he made for when he came home in the evening.

Inside the living room, Beattie looked across at Patty and thought her rather pale. ‘You’re not overdoing it, I hope?’

‘With our Linda in charge?’ Patty said. ‘You must be joking.’

‘You gave her a right bloody turn, I’ll tell you,’ Beattie said. ‘Bloody great fool you were to go out with that cold on you.’

Patty shrugged. ‘Least it gives you a chance to say, “I told you so”,’ she said with a smile, and went on, ‘Don’t fuss, Beat, I can’t bear fuss and I was bored stupid upstairs. I’ll go to bed early tonight and be as right as rain in the morning.’

‘Don’t think of coming into work this week,’ Beattie lectured. ‘And don’t forget, I won’t be able to take the babbies to nursery tomorrow, being as I’ll be living it up in Sutton-bloody-Coldfield. My Bert will have to see to himself tomorrow morning.’

‘He can come here for his breakfast if he wants,’ Linda said, coming in with the cups of tea on a tray.

Beattie accepted a cup from Linda and said, ‘No ducks, you got enough on your plate as it is looking after the nippers and all. For Gawd’s sake, Bert can make himself a few slices of toast and a cup of tea. Won’t kill him, will it? Might even make him appreciate me a bit more, eh?’

‘Aye, and pigs might fly,’ Patty chuckled and to Linda she said, ‘Pull the curtains, bab. We need a light on in here – it’s as black as pitch.’

Linda did as she was bid, glad to shut out the cold night. The rain hammered on the panes like hailstones and she shivered. ‘Hate to be out in this,’ she said.

‘Yeah, pity them Londoners trekking down the Underground night after night,’ Beattie said. ‘God, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘Yeah, and the papers going on as if it’s some great party, as if they choose to do it,’ Patty said. ‘Bleeding fools. I’m glad my sister Lily’s out of it, any road. She was right down by the London docks, you know? How she was supposed to look after all those kids down the Underground, or somewhere just as bad, I don’t know. Any road, she was all for going back home when no bombs fell. It was only her hubby Sid who made her stay; he’d got himself a good job and the kids were settled into schools. I told her to stick it out. I bet she’s bloody glad now.’

‘Basingstoke she was sent to, weren’t she?’ Beattie said. ‘Where’s that then?’

‘Down south somewhere,’ Patty said vaguely. ‘Don’t rightly know for sure, just know it ain’t in London.’

‘Point is,’ Beattie said, ‘my Bert said it shows you now, after the raid on Coventry, that being so very far from the coast is nothing – and you got to admit, Birmingham makes a lot of stuff – armaments, tyres, planes and lots of military vehicles. If Jerry gets wind of it, he’ll come for us, I reckon.’

Both Linda and Patty shivered and Patty scooped the toddling Harry into her arms and hugged him as she cried, ‘For Gawd’s sake, Beat, put a sock in it! Proper Job’s comforter you are. If Hitler’s got something special up his sleeve for us, I hope he waits for the warmer weather, that’s all.’

Beattie drained her cup of tea and getting to her feet she remarked with a laugh, ‘Well, now I’ve cheered you up right and proper, I’ll go and do the same to me old man. Bye, all.’

Linda saw Beattie out, and as she came back in Patty remarked, ‘Right little ray of sunshine, ain’t she, our Beat?’

Linda laughed and took the tray of cups back into the kitchen, but it was really no laughing matter. She didn’t know what Beattie was on about anyway because Hitler had already gone for them. Maybe not as bad as Coventry, but bad enough all the same. The raids in August, the start of the bombs in Birmingham had been quite frightening enough she’d thought at the time, but they had got much worse through September and those in October and the early part of November had been really scary. They had all hid away in the Anderson shelter and she had joined in with her mother singing songs to the children to calm them down. Eventually they both would become drowsy enough to be laid in the bunks made ready for them, but Linda had no such release for she would be so anxious for them all. she would feel as if she had lead in her stomach and her throat would become as dry as dust.

She gave herself a mental shake. What was she doing, worrying about things before they had happened, getting nervous because of something Beattie had said. Her mother was right, she was a prophet of doom all right was Beattie. She saw George looking at her frowning face and wondered how much he had understood of Beattie’s words. No need for him to be worried anyway and she smiled at him and said, ‘D’you want a drink of milk, George?’

The lad nodded his head. ‘Can I have summat to eat and all?’

‘In a bit,’ Linda told him. She knew both boys had a cooked meal at the nursery. ‘Tell you what, I’ll do you some toast on the fire later and I’m sure we’ve got a bit of jam left in the jar.’

‘I’m hungry now though,’ he complained.

Linda poured some milk into a cup and handed him one of the apples they’d got from the market on Saturday. ‘Have this for now,’ she said. ‘I’ll get your tea later.’

Mollified, George sat up at the table cuddling Tolly in his arms and swinging his legs as he watched Linda bustling around, preparing a nourishing meal for her mother. ‘D’you think we’ll be bombed, Linda?’ he asked. ‘Beattie does.’

‘She’s Mrs Latimer to you,’ Linda said sharply. ‘And I don’t know, George. But we’ll be all right – we’ve got the shelter, haven’t we?’

Her brother wrinkled his nose. ‘I don’t like that shelter, it’s smelly and cold and dark,’ he whined.

‘It ain’t dark, George,’ Linda said. ‘I’ve put a hurricane lamp in there and that will soon light the place up. We can take blankets to wrap ourselves in if we have to go down there. ’Fraid I can’t do much about the smell.’

She ruffled his dark hair and said, ‘But why are you worrying, eh? It might never happen. Hitler’s probably finished with us now. Maybe it’s someone else’s turn.’

She didn’t believe it, but George did. In a way Linda wished she was still small and could be reassured so easily. But at least she’d taken the worry away from her little brother’s eyes and she bent and planted a kiss on the top of his head.

THREE

Jenny realised almost as soon as the door clicked behind her that night, that she’d forgotten her torch. No wonder – she’d been in such a state of agitation after the row, when she’d insisted on reporting for duty that night. The point was, it was a disaster not to have any light at all on those blacked-out nights, for you couldn’t see a hand in front of your face. Instead of going back indoors and facing her family again, she began to pick her way cautiously over the ground.

So many people had been killed on the roads during the first months of the war because of the blackout that Stan Walker, who worked with her at the warden post, said he reckoned it was Hitler’s secret weapon. ‘He ain’t gonna fight us at all,’ he said with his wheezy laugh. ‘He’s just going to let us kill ourselves in the bleeding ’orse road.’

White lines were painted along the kerbs and on the running boards of cars and, though they were now allowed shielded headlights, it had made little difference. There were few cars on the Pype Hayes Estate anyway and the white lines were barely visible on a dark moonless night.

Everyone hated the blackout. Norah never stopped going on about it and made no effort to comply with regulations. She would have sat by uncurtained windows, the light shining like a beacon outside, and eaten the entire butter ration in one meal if Jenny hadn’t watched her. Ignoring the blackout carried a fine of £200 and Jenny couldn’t afford to indulge her mother.

As usual though, pangs of guilt began to stab at her as she made her way to the ARP post and she wondered whether she should have stayed at home that night with her mother. She hoped that Norah and Eileen would be all right but she doubted, even if there was a raid that night, that they’d use the Anderson shelter in the garden which her brothers had erected before they went away to war. Being sunk into the earth, it was inclined to flood; her next-door neighbour Mr Patterson had helped Jenny to pump it out just the previous week. He’d floor-boarded it for her too, as he’d done his own at the beginning of the war, and put a seat one side and two bunks at the other. He’d even loaned her his old oil-heater to warm the place up, and she had bought a kerosene lamp that lit the shelter up well enough and while it wasn’t the most comfy place in the world, it wasn’t that bad.

Her mother was adamant, however, that she would not go grubbing in some underground tin shack like an animal, and that was that! Eileen felt the same. The two women had taken shelter under the stairs in the pantry that opened off the living room when the bombs came a little close. People said you were just as safe there – and maybe you were. Jenny was powerless to do anything about it, anyway. She could hardly force them to take shelter if they didn’t want to.

She hadn’t quite reached the post when the siren wailed out a warning. Before it had faded away she saw the planes approaching, though in the dark it was the drone of them that alerted her first. They were nearly overhead before she saw the shapes of them in the sky. The first planes dropped incendiaries, making the blackout irrelevant as the night was suddenly lit up like daylight; now she saw the second column of planes flying in formation behind them. She actually saw the bomb doors open and the bombs topple out fins first and then nose down towards their targets. She heard the first crashes and crumps and, remembering where she was supposed to be making for, she increased her pace.

Jenny knew with a dread certainty that there would be more grieving families before the night was over. She also knew that the news of Anthony’s death had to wait. This was not the time for the luxury of tears.

Linda was toasting bread for her brothers’ tea with a long-handled toasting fork over the glowing embers in the grate when the siren went off. She jumped so suddenly, the toast fell off the fork and dropped into the fire. ‘Oh, bloody hell.’

‘What’s up?’ Patty called from the kitchen, where she was boiling a kettle.

‘I’ve dropped the perishing toast.’

‘They wouldn’t have had time to eat it anyway,’ Patty said struggling into her coat. ‘Go and get the hot-water bottles out of the boys’ beds, will you, love? That shelter will be perishing. I’ll fill the flask up with hot tea.’

Linda looked at her mother with concern. She was right, the shelter would be freezing – the very last place Patty should be spending the night. She scuttled hurriedly upstairs and hoped the raid wouldn’t go on very long and they’d be able to come back inside soon.

The bottles would keep them a bit warmer anyway, she thought, and she tugged the blankets off the beds for good measure. Downstairs, her mom was pouring the contents of the teapot into the flask. She smiled at Linda and said, ‘Nothing’s so bad if you can have a cuppa, eh?’

‘Not half.’

Yes, it would be nice to have hot tea, Linda thought. The vacuum flask was a wonderful invention and very expensive, but Patty had come home with one a few weeks before, bought from someone at work with contacts.

‘Take all that lot down the shelter, Linda,’ Patty said, handing her the flask as well. ‘Then come back and give me a hand with the babbies.’

‘You’d better turn the gas off under the stew, too,’ Linda said, and hoped the raid wouldn’t last long because her stomach was growling with hunger. It was as she was returning to the house that she saw a fleet of bombers heading their way. ‘Hurry, Mom,’ she said as she ran in.

‘I’m coming,’ Patty said. ‘I’ve got Harry’s bottle ready and a packet of biscuits I put by in case this might happen. Get your coat on. I’ll do Harry, you see to George.’

She went into the pantry and could hear the drones of the planes get louder and she looked at Linda in sudden fear. There sounded like hundreds over their heads. Both boys picked up the tension of their mother and sister, and Harry started to grizzle as Patty struggled to fasten him into his suit. But she took no notice and then she picked him up and handed him to Linda. ‘Take him down,’ she said. George trailed after his mother, dragging his beloved teddy bear Tolly behind him, his coat flapping open because Linda hadn’t had time to fasten it.

A resounding crash, terrifyingly close, startled Patty. Her hand closed around the biscuits on the top shelf of the pantry. The sooner they were under cover the better, she thought, and she turned with such suddenness, she almost tripped over George who was clinging to her skirt. The intensity of the raid had unnerved her totally and she screamed, ‘Let go, George, let go! Come on, let’s get to the shelter quick.’

George was too scared to loose his mother’s skirt and, as another bomb landed too close for comfort, he gave a yelp of terror. Patty bent to pick him up with a suddenness that took him by surprise and Tolly fell from his arms on to the pantry floor.

‘Tolly,’ he cried, but Patty wasn’t stopping for no threadbare teddy. She dashed after Linda out of the back door and into the comfortless shelter in the back garden.

Warmed by the hot-water bottles and wrapped in the blankets, they sat huddled on the bench. It was bitterly cold. Patty doled out biscuits by the light of the hurricane lamp she’d hung from a protruding screw on the shelter wall. ‘We can’t eat them all now,’ she told George as he clamoured for more. ‘We might be here some time.’

‘Can we have a cup of tea? I’m gagging,’ Linda asked.

‘Not yet,’ Patty said. ‘This could go on for hours and it would be daft to have drunk it all then.’

Linda said nothing, but her stomach continued to rumble; the biscuits had done little to fill her up and a cup of hot tea would have been comforting. The crashes and explosions all around them were frightening the boys and Linda began to rock Harry to and fro as she and her mom started to sing to the boys as they’d done before to calm them down. They started on all the nursery rhymes they’d ever known to encourage George to join in, and then all the rousing war songs to counteract the explosions and the tremors they felt even through the shelter. In time the lateness of the hour, Linda’s rocking motion and the sucking of the warm milk caused little Harry’s sobs to ease and his eyelids to droop. But George suddenly sat up straight, all sleepiness forgotten as he said, ‘I want Tolly.’

Linda raised her eyes questioningly to her mother, who said, ‘He dropped it on the pantry floor when I picked him up to run in here.’

Linda knew of George’s devotion to Tolly. ‘He’ll be all right, George,’ she told him. ‘He’s looking after the house.’

George lifted a tear-streaked face and said, ‘No he ain’t, ’itler will bomb him.’

‘No, he won’t, George.’

‘Yes, he will. Else why we in ’ere?’

Linda couldn’t answer that and as George began to cry again, she said, ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be all right.’

Patty unscrewed the flask and poured out a half-cup for George. ‘Here,’ she said to Linda, ‘see if this will shut him up.’

Patty took Harry from Linda and tucked him in the bunk with a hot-water bottle and a blanket, and left him sucking the last of his warm milk while Linda was blowing the hot tea until it was cool enough to give George.

‘Beattie’s well out of this tonight,’ Patty remarked.

‘Oh yes, didn’t she say Sutton Coldfield’s too posh to bomb?’

‘Got no industry, that’s why,’ Patty said.

‘She’d better stay there then,’ Linda said, ‘than put up with this. This isn’t a place I’d like to spend much time in.’

Patty’s chest was hurting her again but she tried to control her coughing so as not to worry Linda. ‘I agree with you,’ she said at last. ‘These shelters are not the healthiest places in the world, but we must be safer in here than out there. Our Beattie won’t stay longer than she can help at her Vera’s. She always says she can’t stand her, nor the place where she lives. Apparently they never got on, even as kids. But there you are, blood’s thicker than water when all’s said and done.’

‘Well, she’s lucky to be there tonight at any rate, ain’t she?’ Linda said. ‘If she was here, she’d be sharing our shelter and probably our biscuits too.’

Patty opened her mouth, but before she could say anything George handed Linda back the empty cup, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and said, ‘Can we go and get Tolly now?’

‘God, child, I’ll brain you in a minute,’ Patty cried.

‘It’s stopped,’ George said flatly.

The raid hadn’t stopped exactly, but the explosions were further away, certainly. ‘I’ll run back to the house and fetch Tolly for you,’ Linda said.

‘You’ll do no such thing.’

‘It’s eased a bit. Listen.’

‘Any minute they could be back.’

‘I’ll only be a tick,’ Linda said. ‘You know our George won’t settle without that flipping bear.’

George began to whimper and cry again. ‘I want Tolly, I do. Get me Tolly, Linda.’

‘Honest, Mom, it won’t take me a minute,’ Linda said. ‘Pour me a cup of tea and I’ll be back to drink it.’

She was out of the shelter before Patty could stop her, glad for a moment of the blast of cold air after the stale damp mugginess of the shelter. The air smelt smoky and the night sky was lit up by searchlights; there was an orange glow everywhere. Her ears were filled with the loud tattoo of anti-aircraft guns, the drone of aeroplanes and the sirens of the emergency services.

She’d almost reached the house when she saw the formation of planes that seemed to have come from nowhere and were heading straight towards her like menacing black beetles. She bolted in the back door; the sooner she got George’s bear and was back inside the shelter the better, she thought.

She’d reached the living room and turned on the light when a whooshing sound seemed to knock her off her feet and take all the breath from her body. She lay where she’d been thrown for a moment or so. The house had been plunged into darkness and debris continued to fall all around her. Linda knew a bomb had fallen terrifyingly close and her house had been caught in the blast. She was frightened to death, trembling in every limb, fearing at any moment the house would fall on top of her.

She could see nothing. The darkness was so thick she felt she could almost touch it. Yet she told herself to keep calm, and to try and remember where she’d been in the room when the blast had knocked her over.

Cautiously she got on to her hands and knees and began to crawl frantically over the rubble, whimpering with fear and knowing there was just one place where she might be moderately safe and that was the pantry. However, in the pitch black, she had no idea if she was even going in the right direction.

She found the remains of the pantry door first, and crawled over it into what remained of the small room. She was only just in time. As she lay, panting with fear, the house began to give ominous creaks; there was a sliding, splintering sound and Linda curled in a ball with her hands over her head as with a roar the house collapsed. There was a crash of falling masonry, the smell of brick and plaster, and the stink of charred wood.

Never in all her life had Linda felt such intense terror and she broke out in a cold sweat. The dust swirling in the air was gritty in her eyes, stopped up her nose and filled her mouth, threatening to choke her. Any minute she expected to be buried alive.

Eventually, things stopped moving and there was no sound at all – only a deep silence. She moaned in relief, almost surprised that she was still alive. She tasted blood in her mouth and realised she’d bitten her bottom lip and hadn’t been aware of it. She was so tense, every bone in her body ached.

She was mighty glad her mom knew where she was. She even knew where it was Tolly had dropped out of George’s fingers, so she could pinpoint exactly where Linda would be right away. Until then she knew she just had to stay calm and eventually they’d dig her out.

It was hard though to remain calm, all alone in the dark, and soon she began to shiver with cold and shock. Had she been injured anywhere? She felt all over her face and extended her arms, very gingerly one at a time, not sure how much space she had. She did the same to her legs and gave a sigh of relief when she found there was room to stretch them out fully. It was a fairly large space, she reasoned, so there’d be plenty of air if it was a long time till she was rescued. Suddenly, there was a loud crack above her head and she opened her mouth in a scream. But before she was able to utter a sound and before she could pull her legs out of harm’s way, the bottom of the stairs collapsed on top of them. The stairs had held the weight of the house and of the houses adjoining, and the pain that ran through Linda’s body was agonizing. She was also stuck fast. At first she couldn’t believe it and began wriggling and struggling, but it achieved nothing but more pain.

She forgot about being brave and staying calm. She wanted her mom and she began to shout for her, but her mouth filled with dust and she started to cough. She thought she was going to die, die here all alone in the blackness, and tears poured down her cheeks as she continued to yell for help.

Eventually though, she was too tired and her throat too sore to shout any more and she lay quiet, shaking all over. She tried to calm herself; she wouldn’t be there long. People were probably looking for her right now. She listened intently, but couldn’t hear anything. Maybe the raid was still going on. She had to be patient; they’d come as soon as they could.

When her fumbling hands came into contact with fur, she realized she’d found Tolly and was absurdly pleased. She’d thought he would have been buried under the rubble that had once been their home. George would be pleased at least, she thought, by the return of his beloved bear, but her mom would be cut up by the loss of the house she loved. Linda wondered where they’d all live. Something would have to be found for them; they could hardly camp out in the street. Mom would sort it all out, Linda thought sleepily.

She wished she could see her, or hear her voice. She cuddled Tolly, surprised how comforting it was. The bear smelt of her brother George and she leaned her head against the toy and closed her eyes. She wanted to sleep, to pass the time away till she was rescued, and she thought of all the tales her mother had told her about her real father. She pictured his face before her as he had been in his wedding photograph. ‘Oh, Dad,’ Linda whispered into the darkness. ‘I wish I could remember what you really look like. I wish you were here now.’ That was the last thing Linda could remember. It was as if a deep peace came over her and eventually she slept.

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