Wives at War (39 page)

Army mattresses had been laid on the dirt floor at the end of the communal shelter and all the little ones settled down, some of the older women too.

The two children whom Rosie had picked up at the close mouth had been calmed by the arrival of the dark-haired woman, Mrs Lottman, and her children. They were friends of Mrs Mavor, the woman whose baby had been injured. Mrs Lottman was very concerned about Mrs Mavor's baby and asked for news from the wardens and welfare workers who drifted in and out of the shelter but they could provide no information. The fact that Kenny hadn't returned yet didn't worry Rosie. She assumed that he was helping with rescue work or had been summoned back to St Andrew's Street.

She sat very still by Mrs Lottman's side and watched the children sleep.

The air in the shelter was clammy and condensation glistened on the walls but at least the floor was dry.

Rosie pressed the pad of lint that a warden had given her against her torn eyebrow. If she took her hand away she felt sure that the lint would remain in place, pasted to her flesh by blood. Her eyebrow hurt hardly at all but the cut cheekbone throbbed. She had a bit of a headache and her vision was blurry but Mrs Lottman peered into her eyes and told her she'd be all right.

Mrs Lottman showed no sign of the panic that had affected her last time. Perhaps, Rosie thought, we're adapting and will soon become blasé about spending nights out of bed. Perhaps we will become refugees, drifting from place to place and there will be nothing solid left to hang on to except air-raid shelters and community canteens.

She had assumed that working in Merryweather's would help her make sense of the war. She'd been wrong and if she hadn't been cursed with a stubborn streak she would have packed in the job months ago. Only Mr Bass and two or three of the younger girls ever tried to converse with her now that Doris Maybury had put it about that Rosie MacGregor wasn't really the wife of a policeman but the mistress of an Italian collaborator.

If the fiction hadn't been so vicious Rosie would have laughed it off, but malice and prejudice were home-grown evils that corrupted everyone in time and Rosie was thankful for her deafness and the numbing concentration that assembling small parts hour upon hour demanded.

As the night wore on and the threat of bombing receded, Rosie slipped into a light, not unpleasant sleep. She had no idea what time it was when Mrs Lottman dug her in the ribs. Rosie opened her eyes and read the woman's lips.

‘That's the all clear and unless I'm mistaken, that's your hubby.'

Rosie, stiff and sore now, got up from the bench.

Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to leave the shelter. Mothers were lifting children from the mattresses – sleepy little faces, cross at being wakened – and men were helping the older women to their feet. One old woman was gathering up blankets, shaking and folding them as if the shelter had already become her home. Smoke curled away into the faint pre-dawn daylight through the open door at the far end of the shelter and, looking in that direction, Rosie saw Kenny standing against the light.

He was covered in dust, his hair, normally so neat, standing up about his head as if he'd been electrocuted.

He was grinning, though, and holding up his thumb.

She eased her way along the wall of the shelter to greet him.

He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her.

‘You look terrible,' he said.

‘You don't look so good yourself. What about the Mavor baby?'

‘She's in the children's ward at Yorkhill. They've patched her up pretty well. She lost the little finger on her left hand, poor wee lass, and she'll have some scars on her face when she grows up but her eyes weren't damaged and there were no major injuries.'

‘Where is Mrs Mavor?'

‘She'll be back soon.'

Mrs Lottman, her baby in her arms, joined them.

‘How badly are our houses damaged?' she asked.

‘Most of the windows are out and the gas has been cut off but otherwise they're just about habitable,' Kenny told her. ‘Watch out for the glass, though. There's tons of broken glass everywhere. I'd sweep out the kitchen first, if I were you, and put the kids in there until you can clear the rest of the rooms. The council will send workmen round to board up the windows.'

‘If that's the case, I'll take care of Mrs Mavor's girls,' Mrs Lottman said.

Rosie said, ‘I'd take them but I have to go to work.'

Kenny put out a forefinger and dabbed the blood-caked pad of lint that clung like a barnacle to her eyebrow.

‘Not with that wound, Rosie,' he said, ‘not until you've seen a doctor.'

‘Listen to your man, Mrs MacGregor,' Mrs Lottman told her and, gathering the sleepy brood about her, herded them towards the door. ‘Tell Mrs Mavor where they are, will you please?'

‘Will do,' said Kenny, then with an arm about her shoulder, steered Rosie out into the blackened street.

16

By rights Babs should have been on her knees by breakfast time for she hadn't slept a wink all night. Instead she was filled with defiant energy and pursued her usual routine as if there had been no air raid at all.

The houses in Raines Drive and Holloway Road had escaped unscathed, and when Babs reached the Millses' house she found the usual little band of children waiting to be led to the nursery. Mr Mills told her that Clydebank had been severely damaged, though, and many people had been killed. He warned her that she would be lucky to make it as far as Paisley, let alone St Jerome's. He also asked her to be back before nightfall for predictions were that the Germans would come again to pound what was left of the city and Mrs Mills and he just weren't capable of looking after children in the event of another raid.

Babs pursed her lips, kissed her daughter and set off for Paisley Road.

She was much more anxious now, fearful for her children, her sisters and her mother. For two pins she would have abandoned her trek to Cyprus Street and headed for Manor Park instead. She passed a telephone box with a queue outside it, hesitated, then walked on. All she had to hang on to was her need to reach Cyprus Street. Archie would be there. Archie wouldn't let a little thing like an air raid keep him from doing his duty. My duty, she thought, that's what I'm doing, my duty to King, country and Archie Harding. Hang on to that, honey, and just keep walking.

Babs wasn't the only worker on the hoof that morning, not by a long chalk. Power lines were down at Govan Cross and no trams were running. The thoroughfare hummed with ambulances, fire engines and military vehicles, and, now and then, a police car hurtled past at high speed.

Babs walked for the best part of a mile and was just beginning to think of giving up when a single-decker bus appeared out of a side street and halted at the kerb to let passengers off.

Babs ran up to the cab and shouted, ‘Where are you going?'

‘Paisley depot – if I can get there.'

‘Room for one more?'

‘Hop in.'

Forty minutes later, having skirted floods from burst water mains, rubble-strewn streets and cul-de-sacs ringed by fire engines, the bus reached Paisley, nosed into the depot and stopped.

Babs and the dozen or so passengers who were left on board got off.

She had seen enough damage to be sure that the news Mr Mills had picked up on his wireless set was accurate. Clydeside had taken a hammering and she felt selfish, almost cruel, about neglecting her family.

She had made it this far, though, and would press on. With luck the office phone would still be functioning and she would be able to contact Polly at home, Bernard at his office in Breslin and maybe even Kenny in Glasgow to make sure that everyone was all right.

She set off down lanes and side streets between passive old tenements and corner shops and at length found herself on Aerodrome Road with an unimpeded view of the shipyards and the river.

Her heart sank.

Dense black smoke coiled over the townships on the far side of the Clyde, and in strengthening sunlight she could make out a mass of ruined buildings.

She headed along the straight with tears running down her cheeks and her legs shaking. It was the worst time, there would never be another quite so bad, for it seemed to Babs then that she had lost everything, her children, her mother, her sister too probably, that everything had gone up in smoke and that all she would have left would be files and telephones and a legion of slackers and shirkers, without pride or shame, demanding their rights.

The Aerodrome Road was remarkably quiet, though.

Tramway tracks shimmered in the sunlight. Gulls were strung out in a long white line across the furrows. In the distance, near the old aerodrome buildings, a barrage balloon, dimpled like a pillow, floated only feet above the ground and, even as Babs watched, collapsed in a flapping heap. A Co-op delivery van passed, heading towards Paisley. It was followed by two Red Cross vehicles, not ambulances but motorcars and, of all things, an open-topped double-decker bus packed with children who cheered and waved as they passed.

Babs wiped her eyes with a soggy handkerchief and tried to pull herself together. She was nowhere, though, going nowhere, running from nowhere to nowhere. She began to cry again, to keen softly for Jackie and all the folk she loved whom she might never see again.

Then far down the road she noticed an ungainly little figure pulling towards her from beneath the smoke cloud's shadow. Steering an erratic course between the tram rails, head down and tail in the air, Archie Harding pedalled into view and gradually approached.

Sniffing back tears, Babs watched the bike swerve towards the verge and brake. Archie threw one long leg across the handlebars and dismounted, catching the bicycle neatly by the saddle.

‘Well, well,' he said, panting just a little, ‘what a surprise.'

‘What's surprisin' about it?'

‘I didn't expect to see you today.'

‘If you didn't expect to see me today what are you doin' this far out on the Aerodrome Road?'

‘Taking a spot of exercise, that's all.'

‘Really? Did you pedal all the way from Scotstoun on that thing?'

‘That thing, I'll have you know, is a priceless antique, just one step up from a penny farthing. Been in our family for years. How are you, Mrs H.?'

‘Not so bad really,' Babs said. ‘Are we in business?'

‘Hanging on by our fingernails,' said Archie.

‘That smoke,' Babs said, ‘isn't from our fuel dump then?'

‘Fortunately not,' said Archie. ‘Our fuel dump received a handful of incendiaries but the firemen were on to it at once. They've been spraying down the containers more or less constantly ever since. The black smoke is from the Admiralty oil tanks at Dalnottar. Only one of the seventy-odd tanks is actually on fire, though three tanks were hit. The rest of the smoke is from schools and churches and tenements. I skirted Clydebank to get to the ferry and it doesn't look good. You?'

‘All right. No sleep. Not much damage.'

‘Family all right?'

‘I don't know yet.'

‘Well, not surprisingly our phone's out of order. I've reported it through a line at the warden's post and the Exchange has promised to have it repaired as soon as possible. We've lost all the windows, of course, and some of the plaster but given what it's like over the river…' He shrugged. ‘Anyway, we've lots to do, lots and lots to do.'

‘Archie, why did you come lookin' for me?'

‘I'm responsible for the welfare of all personnel.'

‘Archie?'

‘I knew you'd come, Babs. I knew you wouldn't let me down.'

‘Is that the only reason?'

‘We're two peas in one pod,' said Archie, evasively. ‘And we are now about to be two peas on one bicycle. Shape your haunch to the crossbar, Mrs Hallop, and I will provide the locomotive power.'

‘I perch, you pedal.'

‘Precisely,' said Archie.

She felt better now, relieved of fear and pessimism by Archie's cheerful presence. She hoisted herself on to the crossbar, skirt hitched up and legs dangling and Archie, with considerable care, cocked a leg over the saddle, twined an arm about her middle and, steering with one hand, sent them bowling off along the road to St Jerome's.

*   *   *

‘For God's sake, Polly,' Christy said, ‘don't be unreasonable. I'm only asking if I can borrow your motorcar.'

‘I'm out of petrol.'

‘You're not. You've half a goddamned tankful.'

‘And I'll need every drop.'

‘For what?'

‘To get rid of him for a start.'

‘Rid of him?'

‘Take him back.'

The parlour was the only room in the house that had not been damaged. The windowpanes bulged against their strips of tape but otherwise the room was just as it had been before the bombing. Christy had spread out his cameras, lenses and packets of film on the carpet and was in process of packing them into a canvas bag. He wore his reefer jacket and ankle-length boots, and Polly realised that whether or not she gave him permission to borrow the motorcar he intended to leave her here alone with Doreen Quinlan's child.

She looked down her nose at Master Davy, who had developed an affinity with the huge black leather sofa and was pulling himself around it hand over hand, his little bare feet curling into the carpet, his fat little legs bowed.

Now and then he would glance up at Polly as if he expected praise for his achievements; none was forthcoming.

‘Take him back where?' said Christy.

‘To Babs, or to that man – George whatsisname – let them deal with it.'

‘You can't return him, Polly. He's not damaged goods.'

‘He isn't ours, Christy. He doesn't belong to us.'

‘Who does he belong to then?'

‘He isn't our responsibility.'