Keep the Home Fires Burning (38 page)

‘She’s dead, Marion,’ Eddie said. ‘When they brought her here, I knew it was no use. When tonight’s raid began there was no warning, was there – no siren? And she was giving out about that and she suddenly gave a cry, clutched her hand on her chest and fell to the floor. I hurried up the entry and saw a warden down the street and called to him. He’s a decent sort of chap, and he dispatched his mate for the doctor when I told him what had happened. While we waited for the doctor to come he worked on your mother, pushing on her chest. He called it artificial respiration and he’d learned in First Aid. Anyroad, he got her
breathing again and then the doctor came and called for an ambulance. I went in with her, and the warden came to tell you, Marion, and his mate went to Atkinson’s place. I told him where you’d both be.’

‘But you said the warden got Mammy’s heart going again?’

‘He did,’ Eddie said. ‘But it stopped again in the ambulance and they couldn’t restart it this time. Neither could the doctors here, though they gave it a good try. Anyroad, when they told me she’d gone I thought she didn’t need me sitting beside her no more and I came to wait for you two. I knew you’d be along some time.’

Marion saw the lines etched into deep furrows in her father’s forehead and down each side of his nose, his crinkled, creased cheeks and rheumy eyes, and felt sorry for him. He looked older than his sixty-five years. It was for his sake rather than her mother’s that she’d come pell-mell to the hospital that evening.

So when her father looked up at her with a sad smile and said, ‘Do you want to see your mother?’ she was nonplussed for a moment and so, she saw, was Polly. Marion had no real desire to see her mother, but she knew, and Polly knew, it would have seemed odd if they hadn’t and so they followed reluctantly behind their father.

Clara was laid out on the bed, still and quiet in death as she’d never been in life. Marion was ashamed that the only emotion she felt was relief.

‘She was a sad woman, your mother,’ Eddie said. ‘She never seemed to take a moment’s joy in anything.’

‘No,’ Marion said, ‘she didn’t.’

‘She was packed full of resentment and I should have been the one to have stopped her behaving the way she did, but when the news came in about Michael and she realised that his grave was the ocean, she was beside herself. I was distraught myself but I had to swallow my grief because I thought your mother was losing her mind. Afterwards the tempers she used to get into were frightening. Poor Clara,’ he said, and he stroked her cheek gently. ‘I can’t help but feel sorry for a person who knew such little happiness, even if it was her own fault.’

Pat made all the arrangements for the funeral, as he had done for Tony. The Requiem Mass and funeral were on Thursday of that week, and Marion was gratified by the numbers that turned out. She guessed they had come for her father, who was a well-liked and respected man. Although Marion and Polly had written to the men to tell them of Clara’s death, they knew they wouldn’t be able to come to the funeral, but Peggy and Violet had time off work to attend to show their support for Marion.

Later that day, Marion broached the subject of Eddie’s long-term future. She had assumed that he would stay with them but he said he didn’t want
to. He had lived in Yates Street for years and wanted to continue to live there.

‘But how will you manage?’

‘Just fine,’ Eddie said. ‘Don’t you worry about me. Anyroad, I’ll be at work all day.’

‘You’re not retiring then?’ Marion said. ‘You were sixty-five in March.’

‘Yes, but I have no intention of retiring yet. I like my job. Anyway, the Firm has asked me to stay on. I don’t do much of the heavy stuff now ? I’m more of a supervisor – but I like to feel that I’m doing my bit.’

‘Are you sure, Daddy?’

‘I’m sure, my darling girl,’ Eddie said. ‘I’ll stay until the weekend, if it’s all the same to you, and then move back into my own house ready for work on Monday.’

‘That’s fine by me, Daddy,’ Marion said.

Just over a week later, on Sunday morning after Mass, Marion said to Polly, ‘Our Sarah said that Americans are all they see at the dances these days. Before they landed, there was a grave shortage of young men.’

‘Mine say the same,’ Polly said. ‘And they say these GIs are smarter and better paid than our soldiers.’

‘Yes, and talking like men the girls see on the cinema screen, and showering them with nylons and chocolate and chewing gum. You can’t blame them entirely for having their heads turned,’
Marion said. ‘Thank God our girls are levelheaded, as a rule. Yet even Sarah says it seems really funny to be called “Ma’am” or “honey”, and she tells me the American boys dance with more energy than she has ever seen. She says British boys are sort of shy of dancing.’

‘Oh, well, you’d hardly get a shy Yank,’ Polly laughed. ‘And our Mary Ellen said some of them are as black as the ace of spades, and they’re usually the more polite ones. Some of the white boys don’t like them much, according to what the girls say, anyroad. They can get really shirty if our girls dance with them.’

‘Sarah says the same. I can’t see the sense of it myself. I mean, they’re all American, aren’t they? And I would think they had their work cut out fighting the Japs, without fighting with each other as well.’

‘Me too,’ Polly said with feeling. ‘Still, that’s Americans for you. Now I’d better take myself home. My lot will be sitting there with their tongues hanging out because we all took Communion.’

‘So did we,’ Marion said. ‘But I’m lucky there. Peggy and Violet usually have porridge waiting for us when we get in.’

‘Huh, all right for some,’ Polly said. ‘I bet you bless the day you took those girls in.’

‘I do, I admit it,’ Marion said. ‘And I bless you for giving me the idea in the first place.’

Sam Wagstaffe was a worried man. Though his feelings for Sarah had deepened in the time he had been writing to her, he had given her no indication of this, and only poured his heart out in his letters to his sister Peggy.

She advised him to bite the bullet: ‘The only thing to do is tell Sarah how you feel and then, if she doesn’t feel the same, at least you will know where you stand.’

Sam’s answer came by return of post.

Peggy knew just what her brother meant and felt sorry for him, but still she wrote and said that Sarah was doing no harm: ‘She’s just having fun and she’s entitled to do that because until you admit how you feel, she is a completely free agent.’

They were all free agents and they thoroughly enjoyed having the Americans at the dance halls. They were very glamorous in their blue uniforms. They had the jaunty American caps on their heads, under their jackets they wore shirts and ties, and they had proper tailored trousers. Most strange of all, many wore white shoes. No one in Britain had ever seen a man in white shoes. In fact, no coloured shoes at all except black or brown.

‘But they’re not army issue,’ Mary Ellen said as the girls made their way home the first night they had spotted this.

The others giggled. ‘I’d say not,’ Sarah said. ‘One of them was telling me that they have brown shoes issued, but these are their dancing shoes.’

‘Well they put them to good use,’ said Peggy. ‘Have you seen how they dance?’

‘Yeah,’ Siobhan said. ‘Terrific, ain’t they?’

And they were. They jitterbugged in a wild, unrestrained way that had never been taught in
Madame Amie’s Dance Academy, and the music made everyone want to dance, for the American soldiers were not yet war weary. They were free and easy in their ways, and seemed hellbent on enjoying themselves. It was easy to be affected by this, to forget the raids and privations of war in Britain and have a bit of fun. Sarah, like most young girls, thought they were great.

Glenn Miller’s dance tunes were the favourite of many and so that’s what the band played most of the time. Sarah liked all Miller’s songs, but she liked ‘In the Mood’ the most, and she couldn’t seem to stop her feet from tapping whenever she heard it played.

She remembered the first time she had ever danced with one of the GIs, whom she found out later was called Chuck. It was to that tune and he had swept her to her feet. When in the middle of the dance he suddenly shot her between his legs she had been shocked, especially as this was followed by him lifting her above his head. And then she gave herself up to the rhythm and pulsating beat of the dance, and could usually anticipate what Chuck wanted her to do, so she thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Chuck was impressed. When the band finished he threw his arms around her and said that she was ‘one mean dancer’. After that, though, Sarah danced with others and showed them the elements of the waltz, the quickstep, and the foxtrot for the slower numbers. But she danced a lot with Chuck
because, apart from liking him, they did seem to fit together on the dance floor.

‘Me and you could win jitterbugging competitions in the States,’ he said one evening. ‘Would you consider coming to the States when the war is over?’

Sarah laughed. ‘At the moment that’s like saying “when the sky falls down”. Let’s get this war won before we make any long-term plans.’

‘I’m just saying.’

‘Well, don’t,’ Sarah commanded. ‘Come on, “Chattanooga Choo Choo” is playing. Let’s dance.’

Much as she liked Chuck, Sarah was aware that the American soldiers would not be there for ever. These men hadn’t been drafted into the army to sit out the war in Britain ? one day they would leave ? and so she kept her friendship with Chuck and the others light. Some things they said and the compliments they threw she took with a pinch of salt. But however keen they were on the GIs ? and they all had their favourites ? neither Sarah, her cousins, Peggy nor Violet would even consider stepping outside with any of them because they saw the dishevelled appearance of those that did. Fun and dancing were all very well, but that was as far as they went.

Peggy, however, knew that if Sam had any idea of the way Sarah danced, particularly with Chuck, he would be more worried than ever.

Sam was not the only one irritated by the GIs’ presence in Britain. Richard felt the same. In October he came home for few days’ leave. He was barely recognisable from the boy who had strode away in July. Peggy told Sarah that they had all seen Sam’s transformation too after a few weeks in the army. Violet told him how handsome he looked, and there was certainly nothing of the gawky and unsure boy about Richard Whittaker the soldier.

The second day of his leave was a Saturday and he was looking forward to going to the weekly hop with the girls, remembering that he had been in great demand before he enlisted. He imagined that in his uniform he would be even more popular.

However, the trickle of Americans that he remembered arriving in Birmingham when he joined the army had turned into a positive tide by October. They swarmed all over the dance floor, far too many for Richard’s liking, and he might as well have been invisible because most of the girls ignored him in favour of the American soldiers. He spent most of the evening propping up the bar feeling thoroughly miserable and frustrated.

‘I don’t know what the attraction of them is,’ Richard said to his mother the following day.

‘Don’t you?’ Marion said. ‘Maybe that’s because you’re not a young girl, deprived of the company of young men for a very long time. And then along come Americans, with their silver tongues and money to flash about, and unheard of luxuries like
nylons and chocolate. Is it any wonder they like them?’

‘But the way they dance!’ Richard cried. ‘Mom, it’s disgusting at times. I mean, I’ve seen jitterbugging, even done it myself, but not the way they do. They swing the girls round so wildly some of the skirts billow out and you can see their underwear, or lift them in the air, which has the same effect, or shoot them through their legs. Sarah’s as bad as any of them.’

Marion hid her smile because she knew what was eating Richard and that was the green-eyed monster. She knew all about the American-style jitterbugging because the girls had described it to her. She wasn’t worried what they got up to in a crowded ballroom in front of plenty of other people, it was when young people were alone in the blackout that temptation sometimes overcame them. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Sarah ? she knew right from wrong; they all did – but she had been young herself once. At the moment their passion was for dancing and they went out together and came back together, and that was how Marion liked it.

‘The men at camp think there are three things wrong with the Americans,’ Richard said.

‘Just three?’

‘That’s all,’ Richard said. ‘They’re oversexed, overpaid and over here.’

Marion laughed, but she had no wish to argue. She knew that this was probably Richard’s
embarkation leave and she wanted no bad feeling between them. She also wanted him to enjoy his few days at home and so she told Sarah how he felt, and Sarah told the others. They all agreed he had a point for he had been like a spare dinner at the dance. Violet felt particularly bad about that, for she knew he had really wanted to dance with her. So they went out of their way to make a fuss of Richard and took him off to the pictures a couple of times so that all in all he enjoyed his leave.