There'll Be Blue Skies (15 page)

‘I like Doreen,’ said Jim with a chuckle. ‘There’s no sides to her – you get what you see. As for Doris …’ He pulled a face and shrugged.

She grinned back. Jim always flirted outrageously with Doreen whenever she visited, and it had become something of a game between them – a safe bit of fun that was never taken seriously. ‘She’s coming to tea tomorrow – Doris, that is.’

‘Then I’ll be finding something else to do while she’s here.’ He took a sip of vodka and picked up the cards Alex had dealt him.

‘You could make a start on the list of jobs I gave you,’ she said dryly. ‘They’re still here, pinned to the wall.’

‘Jim and I will make start tomorrow morning,’ said Alex, his voice slurring. He thumped Jim on the back. ‘Is that not right, my friend? We must do all we can to help the little women, eh?’

Jim suddenly looked shifty. ‘Well,’ he began, ‘I’ve a fair few things I have to be doing tomorrow. Perhaps after work on Monday would be better?’

Peggy caught Alex’s eye. They both knew Jim wouldn’t lift a finger, and that it would be up to Alex and Ron to complete the jobs that were now becoming rather urgent – like the broken guttering and cracked pipe, the loose tiles in the bathroom and the damp in the basement. Without bothering to offer them tea, Peggy poured water over the tea-leaves and left them to steep.

‘Speaking of Doreen,’ she said, after putting the knitted cosy over the pot. ‘I’m surprised we haven’t heard from her lately. You’d have thought she’d want the children out of London.’

‘That sister of yours is a law to herself, so she is,’ muttered Jim, eyeing his hand of cards without enthusiasm. ‘She’ll turn up if she needs you for anything – she always does.’

Peggy acknowledged the truth of this statement without ill-feeling. She loved Doreen and knew that her younger sister needed a helping hand now and again and didn’t begrudge her. Doreen was divorced, with two young girls, and held down a secure job as secretary to the owner of a machine factory. She was a woman of the world, who enjoyed life and the company of many admirers, but she had always been a caring, loving mother who put her children first.

Yet Peggy fretted over their safety. Doreen had sent the girls to Wales before war was declared and then, several weeks later, demanded they returned home. If the war escalated – and there was no reason to expect otherwise – then the three of them would be in the thick of it.

Peggy poured the tea and sighed. No doubt Jim was right. She’d turn up sooner or later.

Sally carefully snipped off the loose ends of thread and held up the dress she’d made from a rather dreary outsized frock she’d found on a second-hand clothing stall in the town centre.

After she’d unpicked the seams, harvested the belt, buttons, collars and cuffs that would be useful for something else, she’d given it a good wash and iron before marking out the pattern. It was soft beige, and she’d tailored it to fit her customer’s slim figure with discrete darts front and back, and a little kick-pleat that would show the cream lining when she walked. To liven it up, she’d added a cream Peter Pan collar and matching cuffs which came to the elbow, and had added cream piping down one side of the buttoned front. She’d managed to find eight buttons that matched the material perfectly, and had made a soft belt to finish it all off.

With a sigh of satisfaction, she leant back in the chair and stretched. There was only the hem to do now, and she could take it into work tomorrow afternoon to sort that out and get paid.

Thinking of the money she’d been saving in the jar under her bed made her feel even more satisfied. It was adding up, and when the jar was full, she would ask Peggy to help her open a savings account at the bank where it might even earn a bit of interest. She’d been talking to Mrs Finch, whose late husband had been a bank clerk and knew about these things.

She eyed the pile of clothes that were still to be finished and delivered. Brenda and Peggy had been brilliant at drumming up business, and life would have been very pleasant but for Iris.

Sally’s success in making friends as well as a bit of extra money had had an unfortunate effect on Iris, who never lost an opportunity to spoil things. There had been the incident when ink had been poured over a skirt she’d left on her chair, broken needles in her machine, and scurrilous gossip – which, thankfully, no-one had believed. It was unsettling to have to keep watch for her next trick, and she hoped Iris was getting as tired of it as she was.

‘Here you go, love. Get that down you.’

Sally smiled up at Peggy and took the cup. ‘Thanks, I’m parched.’

She watched as Peggy admired the dress and began riffling through the pile of things on the chair beside her that still had to be finished. ‘That’s for Cissy,’ she explained, as Peggy held up a confection of lavender tulle.

‘It’s a bit much,’ Peggy sighed, turning it this way and that, and making the sequins sparkle in the electric light. ‘Where on earth did she manage to find this much tulle?’

‘She brought me a dress she’d worn for another show and I adapted it. The sequins take a bit of time though, cos she wants the whole bodice covered in them as well as sprinkled through the skirt.’ She eyed it with pride and pleasure. ‘She’ll look ever so lovely in it,’ she sighed.

‘I hope she’s paying you the going rate,’ said Peggy sternly. ‘She gets paid well at Woolworths, you know – and earns a fair bit prancing about on that stage.’

‘Well, I give ’er a discount of course, cos she’s your daughter, but yeah, she pays me.’ She saw a look of mulish determination cross Peggy’s face. ‘Please don’t say nothing, Peggy. I love making ’er pretty things.’

Peggy still looked mulish, but made no further comment.

The wailing siren shattered the peace, screeching like a banshee and echoing right through the house as it grew louder and faster and more chilling.

Peggy left without a word as Sally threw a sheet over the needlework and quickly slammed the lid over the Singer before racing upstairs to the bedroom. Ernie was already stirring – he knew the drill by now, and was trying to put on his coat.

‘Come on luv, time we got into the Anderson shelter, even if it is another blooming false alarm.’ She yanked on his coat and wrapped him in a blanket, grabbed her coat and their gas masks, and hurtled down the stairs.

Anne and Cissy were out, but she met Jim halfway up the stairs on his way to get Mrs Finch, who was as deaf as a post once she’d taken out her hearing aid and slept through everything.

‘You’re getting heavy,’ she panted, running into the kitchen. Plumping Ernie unceremoniously on the chair, she rammed her feet into her shoes, tugged on her coat and reached again for her brother.

‘I will take boy. You help Mrs Reilly.’ Alex was dressed in his uniform, the leather and sheepskin flying jacket buttoned to the chin. He snatched him up and ran down to the cellar, their gas-mask boxes bouncing on his hip.

The siren was still wailing, filling the night like some demonic animal howling in pain. Sally tried to ignore it as she gathered pillows and blankets, and helped Peggy add extra tea and the milk to the box she always had ready to take with them. Everything they might need was in that box, from comics for the boys, to extra matches and cigarettes for the grown-ups.

Jim came hurrying into the room, tiny Mrs Finch in his arms, bleary and confused with sleep. ‘Come on, girls, move, move.’ He chivvied them in front of him, turned out the lights and shut the door before following them down the stairs and out into the darkness of the garden.

Ron was already opening the shelter door and bustling the boys inside. Sally could see the clouds of her breath as she ran down the path in that cold, starlit night. The siren sounded even louder now, and she could hear the ARP warden shouting at someone in the street to find shelter immediately. Searchlights cleaved the black sky, moving back and forth in great sweeps as they hunted for enemy planes.

She waited for Jim to carry Mrs Finch into the Anderson shelter and handed out the blankets and pillows. It was a routine they’d come to know, even though all the alarms since that strafing of the seafront had been false. She settled calmly beside Ernie, fully expecting the all-clear to sound any minute.

‘I must go to the base,’ said Alex.

‘The warden won’t let you on the streets while the siren’s going.’

‘I have my pass,’ he replied. ‘Goodnight. God be with you.’ He pushed through the door and hurried through the gate to the air-force jeep he’d parked at the end of the street.

They looked at one another and smiled as they heard Wally Hall shout and the answering roar of the jeep’s engine and squeal of tyres as Alex drove off.

‘Da! Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I’m fetching me animals, so I am. I’m not leaving them in there.’

‘You’ll sit down, you silly old eejit,’ shouted Jim above the wailing siren.

‘Call me a fool if you want, boy, but I’m not leaving me animals.’ Ron shoved his way out of the shelter.

Peggy had lit the hurricane lamp that swung from a hook on the metal ceiling. It threw eerie shadows over their faces and up the cold, damp walls, making their hideaway seem even more dank and cave-like. ‘I hope the girls are all right,’ she murmured, her eyes dark with worry.

‘Of course they are,’ soothed Jim, putting his arm round her waist. ‘Sure, they’ve got to the shelters in time before. It’ll be no different tonight.’

‘I don’t like them being away from home when the sirens go. You never know what might happen.’

‘Now, Peg,’ he said firmly, ‘don’t let that imagination of yours run riot. They’ll be fine, so they will.’

She didn’t look convinced, but she busied herself with sorting through the box of tins and jars, and found her knitting. But Sally noticed it lay untouched on her lap.

Ron returned wearing his poacher’s coat and a tin helmet, the Enfield rifle slung over his shoulder. Harvey was howling as he crawled under the bench and licked the back of Charlie’s leg. The ferrets were squirming and restless in the deep pockets of Ron’s coat, and he sat down, pulled them out one by one and hypnotised them by softly stroking their bellies before he carefully put them back again.

‘For the love of God,’ sighed Jim. ‘What the divil have you got on your head, old man?’

‘It’s me tin hat,’ he retorted. ‘Sure, and I’d have thought that was obvious.’

‘But what good will it do if a bomb drops on you, tell me that?’

‘I won’t be caring if that happens,’ he replied, fastening the strap under his chin and grinning at his son. ‘But till then it’ll keep me ears warm, so it will.’

‘And what in heaven’s name are you doing with that old t’ing?’ Jim pointed to the rifle. ‘It’ll blow your head off, so it will – and then where will you be?’

‘Without a head,’ giggled Charlie.

Ron shot him a grin, and reached down to pat the dog’s head and comfort him.

‘Now we’ve got that settled,’ Peggy shouted above the awful sound of the siren, ‘would anyone like a biscuit?’ She passed the tin round.

Ron settled down to munch his biscuits, Charlie and Bob on either side of him, the dog behind his legs foraging for crumbs.

Mrs Finch didn’t seem to realise what was happening. She nibbled hers and asked if there was any tea to go with it, and why no-one had put on the electric light. She had the only chair – a canvas beach chair they’d managed to wedge into a corner to stop her falling out of it when she went to sleep – but it didn’t always work, and Peggy had to keep a close eye on her.

Jim finished his biscuit and opened two bottles of beer he’d brought in his coat pocket, handing one to his father. Lighting a cigarette, he leant back on the bench and looked for all the world as if this was an everyday occurrence, and nothing to get het up about. But then he’d already survived the trenches in one war – he knew what to expect.

It was cramped even though the girls weren’t here, and Sally was finding it hard to breathe – it was as if the walls were closing in on her, and the awful wailing siren didn’t help one bit. She almost wished she could howl like Harvey.

The welcome sound of the all-clear came half an hour later. Stiff and cold they left the shelter, the heavy silence ringing in their ears. All the boys were asleep, and Sally carefully carried Ernie back to their bedroom and tucked him in with a stone hot-water bottle and an extra blanket. Weary and cold from the prolonged stay in the shelter, she was soon snuggled down and fast asleep.

The enormous explosion came without warning. It rocked the house, splintered glass, and sent clouds of plaster and dust raining down.

Ernie screamed and Sally rushed to him, dragging him from the blankets and on to the floor beneath the bed. ‘They’ve come to get us,’ he yelled, clinging to her, his tears hot against her neck.

Sally cowered under the bed, holding him beneath her to shelter him. ‘It’s all right,’ she soothed, her voice betraying the terror that tore through her. ‘They won’t get us under ’ere.’

‘I don’t like it, Sal,’ he whimpered, burying himself into her.

‘Neither do I,’ she murmured, kissing his cheek. ‘We’ll just have to be brave together.’ But her thoughts were on Peggy and the others in the house. How bad was the damage? Had anyone been hurt? And why weren’t the sirens going?