Authors: Millie Gray
Patsy had just poured the tea when Mary blurted out, “Dod’s getting oot the morn.”
“Oh, done his time already?”
“Naw. Well … aye. You see, he got time off for guid behaviour.”
“Good behaviour? Well, well, well.” And Patsy sucked in her lips as she savoured her tea. “That’s a first for him – so you must be real pleased.”
Mary shook her head. “Naw. You see, when he comes oot o’ Saughton the morn they’ll be handing him his call-up papers afore they shut the doors ahint him!”
“Are you saying they’re calling him up straight away?”
“Aye.” Mary moved her head closer to Patsy. “I think the guid behaviour thing is just them taking my Dod for a hurl. I mean, they ken he doesnae knock the hell oot o’ folk unless he kens them real well. I mean to say, Patsy, have you ever known him to be charged with thumping anybody he wasnae on first-name terms wi”’
Patsy took her time before answering, “But now we know for sure that we’re going to win the war …”
“We are?” Mary replied, making no attempt to hide her incredulity.
“Of course we are! Surely you’re no forgetting that, firstly, our braw Eighth Army sorted out Rommel at El Alamein in October last year and then just back there in July did the Russians no blooter all the German tanks at Kursk?”
Mary looked away. “Okay, you might be right,” she said, turning back to face Patsy. “But why, oh why then do they want my Dod?”
Patsy nodded. “That’s just what I’m wondering,” she said. What she didn’t tell Mary was that surely the powers that be must be mad to risk everything they had gained by putting Dod on the front line! Good heavens, didn’t they know he’d sell his Granny if the price was right – never mind trading any future victories?
The small home bakery in Restalrig Road was open from six o’clock in the morning selling freshly baked rolls and bran scones. Even if the shop had opened at five o’clock there would still have been a queue of eager customers. This Friday was no different. Patsy had just staggered through with a red-hot tray of rolls when the baker opened the door and the first three customers crammed themselves into the limited space. “Sleep in, Patsy?” joked Wilma Johnston.
“No,” was Patsy’s curt reply. “I’ve been in here since half past four. Ye ken! While you were still lying in your kip, I was earning my daily bread. So what’s it the day? The same half-dozen rolls and two bran?”
“Aye. Here, I’m real glad your Dinah’s getting herself out and about again. I thought she was never going to get over your poor wee Phyllis. And then with her dad following on so quick it seemed to knock the life clean oot o’ her.”
Patsy drew herself up sharp. What on earth was this woman talking about? Dinah had been a model of good behaviour since the night of Phyllis’s death nearly two years ago. And not only had her behaviour been exemplary but she regularly visited the bairns in Linlithgow and wrote every week to Tam – even although there never seemed to be any letters getting out of the prisoner of war camp.
“Mind you,” Wilma blundered on, “I’ll bet she’s fair missing yon tall, dark, handsome GI” Then, adding to Patsy’s discomfiture and terror, Wilma turned to the others in the queue and licked her lips as she told them, “Sure like a film star, he was. The best-looking of the hale tribe that Dinah and her pals had in tow!”
“There’s your order. Next please,” Patsy hissed through gritted teeth, as she tossed the bag of hot rolls in Wilma’s direction.
“Getting them for nothing, am I?” Wilma asked cheekily, while thumping the money down on the counter.
“Sorry,” mumbled Patsy, grabbing the coins and tossing them into the till. “I’m no quite mysel’ the day. Need three jobs I do, just to keep my head above water. And I’m that tired, I’m nearly drowning.” Patsy was indeed exhausted because not only did she work five hours at the bakery every morning but three afternoons a week she cleaned for the piano teacher who owned one of the big houses down in Restalrig Road – while on Friday and Saturday nights she served in Angelo’s fish and chip shop. Yet what else could she do? She had to work to keep herself and there weren’t many who would employ someone of her age. Oh aye, being sixty-one had its drawbacks, one of which was to be regarded as being over the hill, so she was grateful that she still did have work. She smiled at the thought of the bonuses – free rolls and buns from the morning job, a fish tea every Friday and Saturday night, and a tinkle on the piano when she dusted the keyboard.
There was no need for Patsy to knock at Dinah’s door since the key was in the lock. That was no great surprise as Dinah found it easier for people to let themselves in rather than her having the bother of going to open the door. However, when Patsy advanced into the living room (which in her opinion was in need of a good tidy-up) she was confronted by Etta staggering towards the bathroom with a kettle of boiling water. On seeing Patsy, Etta did a quick about-turn into the kitchen with the dribbling kettle. Patsy’s eyes were now drawn to Etta’s infant son, Bill, who was rocking on his bottom from side to side on the floor. From the odour emanating from that direction he was obviously in need of a nappy change.
“Is your Bill no needing his hippen changed?” she called through to Etta.
“Aye, I’m just going to do it. Wish he was potty-trained.”
“Well, you’ll have to work at that – no spend most of the day smoking fags and with your nose in a paper. Look, if you don’t change him right now he’ll have spread it all not just up his back but right up into his head.”
Before Etta could speak, a voice from the bathroom shouted, “Etta, where on earth are you with the hot water? This bath is getting to be bearable … and I’m needing the gin topped up.”
Etta had re-emerged from the kitchen and Patsy was surprised when she skipped over the floor, lifted up Bill and then fled out of the front door.
“Etta, you dozy besom,” cried Dinah, “you’re supposed to be helping me with my problem. But right now you’re only hindering me. Now get in here pronto with that water.”
When the bathroom door was kicked fully open, Dinah drew her feet up from the bottom of the bath so they wouldn’t be scalded when the boiling water was poured in. But it wasn’t the water that sent Dinah’s temperature soaring. It was the sight of her mother who, despite the limited daylight coming though the semi-blacked-out window, immediately knew what was going on. Without uttering a word, Patsy plunged a hand into the scalding water, fished out the plug and sent the water cascading away. “What
do
you think you’re doing?” screamed Dinah while trying to grab the stopper from her mother.
“Trying to save your soul from eternal damnation,” shouted her mother vehemently, as she grabbed a towel and began to rub Dinah’s back dry. “And why I’m bothering I don’t know, because writhing in purgatory or burning in hell forever more is a sight too good for you!”
Dinah’s head slumped forward and she began to sob uncontrollably. “Mum. Don’t you realise I’ll be a laughing-stock?” she cried.
“Well, wouldn’t that be preferable to eternal damnation?” retorted Patsy.
“You don’t understand.” Dinah hesitated as she searched for an excuse that would have her mother relent. “I was taken advantage of by a …” She just couldn’t continue.
“A GI Joe?” sneered Patsy, seizing the gin bottle and pouring the remaining contents into the lavatory, flushing it away with a defiant pull of the chain.
Dinah nodded. “So you see, it would be better to risk damnation and get rid of it.”
“What?” screeched Patsy. “Look, Dinah, if you, a married woman, hadn’t been keeping company with that blasted man, he couldn’t have … well he just
couldn’t
have!”
“But Mum, you seem to think I don’t know I’ve sinned and now am going to commit an even bigger sin – a mortal one – that three Hail Marys and an hour on my knees praying won’t get me out of. But I
have
to do something.” Dinah could see from the look on her mother’s face that Patsy was going to take a lot more convincing before she’d let her abort the baby so she continued quickly, “Don’t you see that I’d rather be doomed for ever than what it would do to … Oh, Mum, think how Tam would feel when he gets home – and he
will
get home now that we’re winning.” Dinah looked imploringly at her mother but still there was no sign of weakening from Patsy so she hurriedly added, “Not to mention the disgrace on the bairns.”
“I
am
thinking about Tam and the bairns and all the heartache you’ll cause them. But more important, I’m thinking of
myself
because if I did let you do such a mortal sin I would be condemned too!” Dinah looked as if she was about to interrupt her mother but changed her mind and Patsy continued her tirade: “So the best solution is for you to go to the Sisters in Glasgow where nobody will know who you are – and what you are. The bairn, God bless him or her, can be adopted from there.”
Dinah leapt out of the bath. “You sanctimonious old witch. You would send me, your only daughter, to a St Jude’s Laundry where the vicious nuns will beat the living daylights oot of me until they think I’m no longer in moral danger!”
“Who says the Holy Sisters are cruel?”
“Who says? Just have a look at Sadie Thomson, raped by her father and he’s still abusing his daughters at will. She was sent to Glasgow to give birth to her bairn and she’ll never be the same again.” Dinah shook her head. “Mammy, they say Sadie’s so crazed noo, always looking for the bairn that’s God knows where, that they’re thinking she’ll need to go to Bangour Village Hospital!”
“Dinah, the choice is yours.”
“But it’s no. I want to abort this,” Dinah looked down at her stomach, “and you’re only thinking of yourself and your conscience by making me have it.”
“Yes. And, as I’ve said, the choice is either you thole all the embarrassment – and can I remind you that I’ll have to put up with that too – or you go to the nuns!”
Even now, in October 1943, Fred Armstrong couldn’t really say the men had settled into the fertile farmland surroundings of Frankvitz, which they’d reached after their gruelling march of some 550 kilometres through Poland in June 1941. They just hadn’t been able to understand why they had been moved. They’d worked very hard in the sugar-beet factory and although their diet was poor and the conditions appalling they had caused no trouble. They were even grateful that the stability meant they occasionally got letters from home and had been given access three times to their looted Red Cross parcels!
The surprising thing about the farmland was that it was also being worked by Polish male along with Russian male and
female
prisoners of war. At the end of the day the four different groups would trudge wearily towards their designated huts for the night.
Normally the chat there would always come around to exchanging ideas on how to escape, though to be realistic there was no way that anyone could escape and survive. So it caused much amusement when Billy announced that he thought they should try to dig a tunnel. His mates thought Billy hadn’t quite grasped that you didn’t have to dig a tunnel to get out of farmland – you just had to walk out when the guards weren’t looking. Fred had gone out of his way to tell all that to Billy, who in turn shook his head and patiently went on to explain that he wouldn’t be digging a tunnel in order to escape – but to get into the Russian women’s sleeping quarters at night!
Christmas 1943 was just three days away when Fred found himself putting his bony fingers to his face and savagely massaging his sunken cheeks. He was desperate to avert his mind from the problem in front of him. Oh yes, he did try to work miracles for his men, but Charlie, brave and always optimistic Charlie Tracey, just wasn’t going to make it. The trouble for Charlie, and indeed for all of them, was that, having been force-marched from their first camp to this farmland, the long trek, the starvation diet and all the other deprivations had taken their harsh toll. And that was on top of the years spent in captivity. No one, no matter how tall, now weighed more than six-and-a-half stone. This meant they were susceptible to all types of infection and in particular to the dysentery that was rife within the camp.
Fred had nursed Charlie through his first bout of dysentery, but this second one would, he feared, take him away.
“Sarge,” asked Charlie, whose voice was so weak that Fred had to lean over to hear, “any letters … from hame? I just ken my ma would have written at least once since my birthday last April.”
Lifting himself from Charlie’s bed, Fred gave a nod of assent before striding out of the bunk house and calling to one of the guards. “Look,” he said to the big abusive Bulgarian who had taken the job of guarding the prisoners rather than be shot, “that young lad in there, Charlie Tracey, is dying and he was asking if there were any letters for him. Could you check?”
“You maybe pay me something for my trouble?” replied the guard in broken English.
“No! But won’t all the stuff you and your mates have taken from our Red Cross parcels no be enough, like? The parcels and their contents are all we have to trade with right now.” Fred now looked straight into the guard’s eyes. He hoped the man could read in his steely stare that he was telling him they wouldn’t always be prisoners and that they both knew how the war was going to end.
Half an hour had gone by before the guard returned, clutching a bundle of letters. “Here,” he said with a big smirk on his face. “Look how good I am to you! I have even brought two Red Cross parcels for you to divide among you all.”
Fred smiled his thanks and began to skim through the letters. All had been posted about two months previously and he wondered what had happened to the ones that would have gone to their first Stalag. He shook his head, thinking it was better to have a few letters than none at all. Luckily, there were two for Charlie and Fred held them up for him to see. “Aye,” said the dying man, “that’s Ma’s handwriting. Beautiful, is it no?” He then started to cough and retch before falling backwards and closing his eyes. Fred didn’t realise for a few minutes that he had gone, but then he tore open the envelopes and, taking out the letters, read them to Charlie. If only, he thought, the old myth was true that the spirit didn’t leave the body for half an hour after death and that Charlie was hearing his mother’s words.