War Babies (12 page)

Rachel tidied the kitchen, trying to keep busy and fill her mind with something other than her mother’s struggles. She thought about Danny, about the drawings in the notebook. She felt the
emotional tug of them again as if they were the key to understanding Danny. The boy in the drawings, Jack, had looked solitary but happy. She wondered why Danny had drawn him wearing a straw
hat.

As the morning progressed the sounds from upstairs became more intense. By midday, sitting at the kitchen table muzzy-headed with exhaustion, Rachel heard a sound which made her heart crash in
her chest: the cracked, outraged cry of a newborn baby. She sat up straight with astonishment. The next moment she heard Fred’s feet pounding up the stairs, but she waited for a little while
before following him.

Knocking on the door, she walked in to find Fred perched on the side of the bed, his eyes looking wet and adoring as Peggy lay back, utterly spent, with the little wrapped bundle in her arms.
Rachel stalled at the door, immediately feeling as if she was intruding.

‘A little wench,’ Miss Lofthus said, seeing her. Her voice sounded distinctly slurred. ‘All well with her – though she took her time, that one did.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ Fred was saying. ‘My poor little pigeon –’ He laid his arm protectively round Peggy’s head, with her damp hair plastered down on it.

‘Go and see yer sister then,’ Miss Lofthus said to Rachel, since no one else took any notice. ‘And then, bab, I’ll need more water. There’s a bit to do yet. And
another cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss.’

Rachel went and peered at the tiny pink face of the baby. She was lying with her eyes closed, and very still.

‘Say hello to your little sister,’ Fred said. ‘This is Cynthia. A proper little princess, that’s what she is.’

Rachel thought she looked more like a broiled rabbit. Her mother half-opened her eyes for a moment and murmured something before closing them again.

Rachel slipped away. At the door she looked back at the three of them: Fred, her mother and this new being who had arrived. Fred Horton had his own daughter now. There they were, all together in
a perfect triangle. Feeling cold and tired she went downstairs to boil yet more water.

It felt as if she had been imprisoned in the house for days. She stepped out into the scrubby backyard and immediately heard voices, a gaggle of the neighbours over the wall, all talking
excitedly. The air smelled mouth-wateringly of Sunday dinners roasting.

The woman next door leaned over the wall and called to her, ‘How’s your mother, Rachel – did I hear summat from in there?’

‘She’s all right, ta, Mrs Hodge,’ Rachel said, squinting in the sudden light. Shyly she added, ‘She’s had the babby – a little girl.’

‘Ooh, has she?’ Mrs Hodge, a lean, handsome, copper-haired woman, called over her shoulder to the others, ‘Hear that? A new babby next door – a girl!’

Everyone made noises of approval. There was talk of wetting babies’ heads.

‘What a day to arrive!’ Mr Hodge said, appearing beside his wife, blonde and pink skinned. Rachel never thought they looked well suited: what with her hair, they clashed,
colour-wise.

‘How d’you mean?’ Rachel asked. She felt stupid with tiredness, as if nothing quite made sense. She had been in another world.

‘Have you not heard, bab?’ Mrs Hodge said. ‘Oh my word, I s’pose you’ll’ve missed it. We’re at war! Eleven o’clock – on the wireless –
our Mr Chamberlain. He said if the Germans dain’t clear out of Poland we’d be at war and they ain’t – so we’re at war.’

Rachel ran back inside and up the stairs.

‘We’re at war!’ she cried into the thick air of the bedroom. ‘They said next door. The war’s started – Mr Chamberlain said!’

Miss Lofthus was wringing out a cloth over a bowl. Peggy raised her head from the pillow for a second.

‘Oh, Lord above,’ she said.

‘Rach – hang on, wait for me!’

Lilian came charging along as Rachel set out for work a few days later on a cool, misty morning. Her cardigan was flying open and her hair already working its way out of the coil of a bun she
had attempted to pin it back into. Rachel smiled, seeing her skinny friend tearing along. Lilian grabbed Rachel’s arm and clung onto her.

‘My God, it’s good to see you!’ she cried.

Rachel smiled, surprised. ‘What’s up with you?’ she said as they walked up the Coventry Road amid the other hurrying morning workers.

‘Hey –’ Lilian didn’t answer the question straight away. ‘Has your mom had the babby yet? She must’ve by now?’

‘Yeah,’ Rachel said.

‘Well, you don’t sound very excited. When Bobby was born I thought he was the best thing ever! What is it then?’

‘It’s a baby,’ Rachel said flatly.

‘
Rach!
’ Lilian tugged on her arm.

‘All right – it’s a girl. Cissy. Well, Cynthia but they call her Cissy all the time. She’s little, she’s got two arms and two legs and two of everything else except
a head –’

‘What about nose?’

‘One nose. And one hell of a gob – she never stops blarting.
Wah wah wah
all flaming day – and night.’

These days Rachel felt even more pushed away by her mother, who existed walled in by napkins and the baby sucking away at her, and Cissy’s yowling.

‘Oh, Rach, you’re awful – I bet she’s lovely.’

‘She’s all right,’ Rachel conceded. ‘When she’s asleep.’ She did stand sometimes and marvel at the little girl’s flickering eyelids and her little
sucking mouth. She’d nothing against Cissy. She was a sweet little thing. But what she couldn’t stand was the way Fred slobbered over the baby. ‘Ooh, look at my little princess
– the most beautiful thing in the world – ooh what a little darling.’ It was enough to make you sick.

‘Rach,’ Lilian was saying, still clinging urgently to her arm. ‘I’ve got to get out of this job. It’s going to drive me out of my wits I’m so bored. What can
I do?’

‘I thought you said they were nice?’

‘They are, but I don’t know why I went to do it – I never liked arithmetic or numbers or anything when we were at school. And there’s only so much you want to know about
cricket bats. The firm’s all right, it’s the
job
– it’d be the same wherever I was. And now with the war and everything . . .’

There were signs of it everywhere, the changes that had come one by one. There were sandbags stacked up all over the place which all the dogs seemed to enjoy cocking their legs against, silvery
barrage balloons tugging on their cables above the city and white-painted edges along the pavements to make it safer in the dark. Fred was doing a roaring trade in blackout material and it took
them ages every evening, blacking out the house so that not a crack of light showed from any window. Posters were appearing with urgent messages on them: ‘
FREEDOM IS IN
PERIL, DEFEND IT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT
!’

‘Well, there’re jobs going,’ Rachel said. ‘What with the lads joining up. Why don’t you come and work at Bird’s?’

‘Could I, d’you think? Oh, Rach, I’d work anywhere almost, except doing this.’

‘I’ll ask for you. You’d be in the factory, I expect – we’re ever so busy,’ she added importantly.

Within a fortnight, Lilian was established in the basement of the Devonshire Works where the packing was done. She was happy enough.

‘They keep telling me the custard’s made up at the top,’ she told Rachel at the end of the first day. ‘You know, the powder and that. And it comes down to us. I keep
thinking there’s this big river of custard pouring down the stairs!’

Rachel laughed. ‘Think of it – all bright yellow!’

‘Oh, it’s so much better here,’ Lilian said, ‘instead of being in that poky little office where I was. Even if everything is covered in yellow dust! We can have a chat
and a laugh here. And the wages aren’t much different anyway.’

Rachel was very happy to have Lilian around. But there was one problem. Lilian expected that every day the two of them would meet after work and go home together, if their shift patterns allowed
it. But some days, every now and then, Rachel came out of work to find Danny waiting for her.

‘The thing is, Lily, he waits for me to walk me home when he can,’ she explained to her friend.

‘Oh, I see,’ Lilian said rather huffily. ‘So you’re going to ditch me again for some boy . . . It’s that market boy, isn’t it? The one with the
eyes.’

Rachel blushed. ‘I like him, Lily. There’s summat about him.’

‘Well, I don’t want to play gooseberry,’ Lilian said. ‘If he turns up I’ll clear off and leave you to it.’

Rachel gave her a playful punch on the shoulder. ‘Ta, Lily. You’re a pal. He’s quite shy, see, and it’s easier if it’s just me and him.’

‘I get the message,’ Lilian said, long-sufferingly. ‘So –’ She looked at Rachel with a mischievous glint in her eye. ‘Danny boy, eh?’

April 1940

All these months it had felt as if they were waiting for it to begin properly. The Phoney War, as it came to be called, went on all through that winter. The Russians were
fighting across Finland and Poland; the Germans – ‘the forces of darkness’, Fred Horton called them – forcing their way into country after country: first Poland, now Denmark
and Norway. There seemed to be nothing that would stop them.

Rachel had seen her mother become more and more nervous as the news piled upon them. The Germans appeared to be drawing daily closer. With the new baby she seemed to feel everything more
intensely.

‘Don’t you worry, Peggy,’ Fred kept trying to reassure her. ‘We’ve got our cellar if anything happens and it’s quite cosy down there. We’ll be quite
safe.’

‘Not if they invade we won’t!’ Peggy sobbed, cradling Cissy in her arms and looking woefully down at her. ‘They’ll soon have us surrounded! And it’s bad
enough stumbling about in the dark and having all this stuff stuck across the windows making you think of bombs falling on us every time you look out. And as for those horrible masks! Oh, my little
darling, what kind of a world have I brought you into?’

Rachel held back from reminding her mother that she had once upon a time brought her into the world as well and that she was still here. But Peggy was also strangely more upset that Sidney
Horton had been called up than his father was. She had thought that his job might be a reserved occupation, but apparently it was not. Sidney who was twenty-one had to go.

‘These poor boys,’ Peggy said. ‘It’s all wrong. It’s just like the last time. This should never have happened again – it’s wicked, that’s what it
is. Just like poor James. And what good did it do anyone?’

Rachel had been rather enjoying the possibility that Sidney might meet with physical misfortune somewhere along the line – a serious injury at the least. And she realized that what was
really upsetting her mother was the memory of her own brother, James, who had died in France. All Peggy’s emotions seemed to be heightened and she went to pieces at the slightest thing.
Rachel wondered what had happened to the mother she used to know who had seemed strong enough to stand up to anything.

The first time she visited Gladys’s and Danny’s house was a Sunday afternoon in April. As she turned up at the Rag Market week after week to help Gladys out and see
Danny as often as possible, gradually they had all got used to each other. Gladys now seemed to take it for granted that she would be around.

‘Come and have a cup of tea with us tomorrow, bab, will you?’ Gladys invited while they were in the market. ‘I’m having a little do for my pal Dolly. It’s her
birthday.’

Rachel was excited to be asked. Only slowly had she come to realize how alone in the world Gladys was. She was such a strong, attractive personality, so capable and friendly, that Rachel had
somehow imagined that she had a home full of family and a husband, even though she knew full well that Gladys was a widow. It sounded as if her friend Dolly was very important to her and she was
happy to be included.

‘Get the number six tram, then walk along to Summer Lane,’ Danny said, as Gladys moved away and picked up a man’s jacket to inspect it. ‘We’re in Alma Street
– a bit further along.’

‘Come and see the palm trees swaying,’ Gladys sang over her shoulder. She smiled at Rachel’s baffled expression. ‘It’s a song, bab –’ She continued
singing, her voice deep and strong:

She finished off, laughing, as a couple of other people joined in beside her and there was clapping. Gladys took a joking bow.

‘So you get the tram. Get off by the nail works and Danny’ll meet you – oh yes, you will, Danny – about three, all right?’

When she arrived in Summer Lane she was still half-expecting to see palm trees but this illusion was quickly dispelled. Danny was waiting when she got off the tram and she saw
his grin as he leaned against a wall. They were both growing up, she could feel it. Danny had turned sixteen and he was taller, broader in the shoulders, like a man. And she sensed that he looked
at her more as a man would look. She was wearing a new pale pink frock that Peggy had made for her and some white shoes, her hair, now shoulder length, neatly pinned back each side. She hoped Danny
would like the way she looked and when she saw his eyes drinking in the sight of her, she could see that he did.

‘Hello you,’ she said shyly, and the way he smiled back, his cheeks turning pink, she realized how much small things pleased him, and that he was happy to see her. ‘You gunna
show me the way then?’

‘Come on then,’ he said.

Summer Lane, a shabby vista, stretched ahead of them, lined with factories, warehouses and shops, with warrens of houses packed everywhere in between. The smell of coal smoke was very strong for
it was a breezeless, heavy day, the sun straining to shine through pale clouds. The street was crowded with children who’d all been turfed out to give their weary moms and dads some peace.
Rachel had to dodge to get out of the way of kids whirling round the lamps on remnants of rope or dashing back and forth with hoops or makeshift carts. A lad was scooping horse muck into a bucket
with a wafer of plywood and seemed to be falling out with another who wished he had got there first. The gutters were still wet and mucky from recent rain.