They walked along streets annihilated by bombs. There were gigantic mounds of rubble, all that was left of a terrace of houses or shops. Often those mounds still smouldered, grey smoke curling into dull, dusky dawn sky. At others, people clambered over them, painstakingly removing bricks to release those trapped beneath, with the help of the glowing orange sky and shielded flashlights.
Lizzie and Violet stepped over sandbags, often seeping and dripping wet, and dribbling hosepipes that littered the pavements, and which often ran with water. They saw roads with gigantic craters in them, others where the tar had melted and slid into the gutters, leaving the tram lines warped and distorted.
They went up Bristol Passage and stopped dead, for one side of Bell Barn Road and all of Grant Street was one massive sea of rubble. People were moving over it, searching for survivors.
Please God, let Flo be dead!
As soon as the sentence popped into Lizzie’s head she disregarded it and prayed for forgiveness, but Violet, guessing her thoughts, said to one of the rescue workers, ‘Where were the injured taken?’
He shrugged. ‘Into town, but the General was hit too. People say Lewis’s has opened its basement.’
And there they found Flo and Rodney, though there was no record of Neil. Lizzie and Violet weren’t allowed to see them as they were heavily sedated, but the nurse told the women to come back the following day when the doctor had seen the injured and they’d have a better idea of the state of their injuries.
They were nearly home again when they came upon the woman. They knew her: her name was Sandra Hearnshaw and she’d lived above Flo in Grant Street. Her girls Dianne and Dora had often played out in the street with Niamh, being of similar ages, and they had a wee brother, William, just six months old.
Even in that light, Lizzie could see how bedraggled the three were. Sandra’s arms were ominously empty
and the girls trailed behind her. ‘Can I help you?’ she said.
Sandra looked at her with vacant eyes. ‘Help me?’ she said, as if she’d never heard of such a thing. ‘No, no one can help me. Blown right out my arms he was. I couldn’t do owt.’
Sudden fear clutched Lizzie. Surely to God…But this wasn’t the time or place to stand firing questions. ‘Come on,’ she said as she reached her entry. ‘Come in and have a drop of tea and something to eat.’
The woman allowed herself to be led down the alleyway and followed Lizzie into the house. Violet lit the gas lamps and Lizzie saw the little family clearly for the first time. Their clothes were in tatters and not really suitable for the elements, and over everything was a film of dust and ash, ingrained into their skin and coating their hair. Down the girls’ faces were cleaner tear trails, but it was in their eyes that Lizzie saw the panic and petrified terror.
The story came out slowly as the children drank the cocoa Lizzie made and munched the toast. ‘I was sheltering under the stairs,’ Sandra said, ‘cos Billy, he’d had a touch of bronchitis, like, and I didn’t want to risk the shelter. People say under the stairs is the next safest place, don’t they?’
Sandra was asking for assurance and Lizzie said gently, ‘Aye, they do.’
‘Anyroad, there was this bomb, like,’ Sandra went on. ‘And Billy, he was pulled from my arms, like, and flung across the room, and the house collapsed on him, on us all. I couldn’t get to him, me and the girls was trapped. They dug us out like, but the babby…he
never stood a bleeding chance. Warden wouldn’t even let me look. He said…he said I wouldn’t want to see him like that. I mean, Lizzie, what harm’s a baby done, anyroad?’
Lizzie, the tears seeping from her own eyes, shook her head helplessly. She held Sandra’s shuddering body against her own for a minute, but practicalities had to be discussed. ‘Have you anywhere to go?’
Sandra shook her head. ‘There’s only me and the kids. I mean, there’s Malcolm, like, but he’s away in the army.’
‘Your parents?’
‘Both died of TB,’ Sandra said. ‘I was brought up by my gran. She died the day war was declared. She remembered the Great War, see. Said it killed my granddad. Now everything’s gone. The house I worked for and my little babby. God, I don’t feel I want to go on any more.’
‘Come on, Sandra,’ Lizzie urged. ‘You can’t give in. Think of the two wee ones you have left.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You must,’ Lizzie said firmly. ‘Look at them, for Christ’s sake. Who have they got now if you give in?’
Sandra looked at the poor, suffering children, as if seeing them for the first time. She was suddenly smote with pity, and got up from the chair and, bending down, put her arms out. The relief on the girls’ faces as they rushed into their mother’s arms brought tears to Lizzie’s eyes again.
‘What are you going to do?’ Violet asked her quietly.
‘Put them to bed. What else?’
‘I mean after?’
‘They can stay here. I’ve the room an’ all.’
‘Have you thought about this? Your mother-in-law…?’
‘Has somewhere to go,’ Lizzie said. ‘If she survives, she has a sister Gladys who’s as mean-spirited as she is herself. She nagged her husband to death, Steve always said. Anyway, she rattles about by herself in a big house on the Pershore Road. Plenty of room for the in-laws, and Neil if he survived it all. I couldn’t have them all here, anyroad.’
‘What about Steve?’
‘I’ll square it with Steve,’ she said. ‘You know how he loves kids? I’ll stress the fact that Sandra hasn’t a soul belonging to her and neither have the children.’
Lizzie found out the next day that Flo was in fine fettle and good voice. Firstly, though, she had gone into town and got clothes for Sandra and the children at the Mission Hall, and then the family trailed up to the Town Hall for new identity cards and ration books, for Sandra’s shelter bag had been buried in the rubble. They ate from a WVS van and then Lizzie went along to Lewis’s to see how her in-laws were, while Sandra went to see about her money in the Post Office and the insurance policies.
Flo looked anything but pleased to see Lizzie, and Lizzie reminded herself that her mother-in-law, who was getting old, had had a terrifying experience and maybe had no news of Neil. But before she could say a word, Flo snapped, ‘You took your bloody time.’
‘I came as soon as I found out, last night, but I wasn’t allowed to see you,’ Lizzie said. ‘You were sedated, they told me.’
‘You’d be sedated an’ all, girl, if you’d been through an ordeal like that.’
‘I know,’ Lizzie said, genuinely sympathetic. ‘It must have been terrible. Violet and I hadn’t left work, so we took shelter in their cellar.’
‘All right for some,’ Flo growled out. ‘And why ain’t you at work today?’
‘There was damage,’ Lizzie said. ‘It wasn’t hit, but some of the buildings around were, and the factory was caught in the blast.’ She shrugged. ‘Might be back tomorrow.’
‘Well, I shall be out in a few days,’ Flo said. ‘So you’d best prepare yourself. Rodney’s worse, poor sod. Our Neil’s been to see him and told me.’
‘Neil?’
‘He weren’t with us last night,’ Flo said. ‘He was at the shop and he took shelter at a mate’s house, so he d’ain’t know about the house till the morning. Said his dad’s in a bad way.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No you ain’t,’ Flo snapped. ‘Never give us the time of day, you. Well, things will change when I move in with you, I’ll tell you.’
That was Lizzie’s worst nightmare, and though she wouldn’t have wished a minute’s harm on Sandra’s family she blessed the fact she had a house full. But Flo wasn’t interested in Sandra Hearnshaw, like she wasn’t interested in anybody but herself and Steve. She didn’t listen to the tragic tale of the dead baby and
dispossessed mother and her girls, who hadn’t a soul belonging to them.
‘I can’t believe you have the audacity to stand there and tell me you’ve given house-room to some strangers over your own flesh and blood,’ she shrieked. ‘By God, girl, you take some beating.’
Lizzie almost recoiled under the blast, issued with such venom. ‘Come on, Flo, be reasonable,’ she pleaded, but she knew, even as she spoke, that the woman had never been reasonable in the whole of her life. ‘Sandra has no one and she needs support.’
‘And I don’t?’
‘Aye, yes, but you have Gladys.’
‘Gladys! You know I never could abide our Gladys,’ Flo snapped. ‘Anyroad, it’s not for you to tell me where to lay my head. I’m family, and you owe me.’
‘I haven’t room,’ Lizzie said firmly. ‘I can’t turn Sandra and the two little girls out into the street. Gladys will take you in, I’m sure she will, and there’ll be room for Neil. He’ll hardly want to bide at his mate’s forever.’
‘You don’t want us, that’s the truth of it.’
Too right, Lizzie thought, but what she said was, ‘It’s not a question of wanting or not wanting. Sandra has nowhere to go and you have.’
Flo’s eyes narrowed. ‘It ain’t your decision,’ she growled. ‘You tell Sandra bloody Hearnshaw not to get her feet too far under your table, for she’ll have to take them out quick when I write and tell our Steve about you.’
‘Well,’ Lizzie said with a sigh. ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘Yeah, we will. We’ll see all right,’ Flo said
malevolently, and went on, ‘I tell you, I rue the day my lad ever saw you, for you’ve brought him nothing but heartache. He might have forgotten that you once got him locked up in a cell, but I never will. Christ Almighty! But I’ll have my day with you yet. You just see if I don’t.’
Despite herself, a shiver of fear ran down Lizzie’s spine at Flo’s words and the vindictive way they were spoken. She looked at the woman in the bed, her face contorted with hate, and knew she was eaten up inside with bitterness and misery. She should be able to feel sorry for her, but she couldn’t and she wouldn’t stay a moment longer to be abused.
She forced herself to speak calmly. ‘I must be going, Flo.’
‘Oh that’s right, run away. Truth hurts, so they say.’
Lizzie refused to rise to the bait. ‘I’m running nowhere,’ she said. ‘I’ve a lot to see to and may be back at work tomorrow. And I want to see how Rodney is.’
She thought Flo might call after her, but she didn’t, and gradually Lizzie felt her shoulders relax and her pounding heart slow down a little.
Rodney was very ill. As Lizzie was a relative, one of the nurses told her he had little chance of survival, and when she looked at the semi-conscious, delirious man in the bed, she didn’t doubt it. ‘His internal organs are all damaged,’ the nurse told her. ‘Crushed, mainly. All we can do is try to keep him pain-free. It won’t be for long.’ She put a hand on Lizzie’s arm. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’m sure you’ve done your best. I must away now and write to my husband. God knows whether he’ll be allowed leave or not.’
She wrote that day, telling him of the raid and the injuries of his parents. She went on to highlight Sandra’s plight, playing on the tragic death of the baby and the distressed state of the children, knowing he would be affected by that, and suggested that Flo go to her sister’s when she left the hospital, sure that Gladys would welcome her.
Your mother isn’t at all keen, but I really think this will be for the best. Sandra hasn’t a soul to call her own.
She’d barely finished the letter by the time the sirens blasted out their warning and Sandra’s children began to scream in fear.
By the time Steve’s reply came, his father Rodney had lost his tenuous hold on life. Flo was almost ready to leave the hospital and Lizzie and Violet and quite a collection of other neighbours had watched a wee coffin with the remains of Billy Hearnshaw being lowered into the black earth in Witton Cemetery.
Lizzie, as a Catholic, was unable to attend the service, but she was glad she was at the graveside to support the weeping and distraught Sandra. She wished Malcolm could have got leave, but it wasn’t to be, and she felt so sorry for the woman, no older than herself, so distressed and full of grief.
The next day, Steve’s reply came:
I’m sorry about the old fellow, for all we’ve never been that close, and I know Ma can be dif
ficult at times. I’m sure you’re right about her living at Gladys’s, it will be more comfortable for her, anyroad, with her getting on, and she’ll see that in time.You’re right to offer Sandra a place. I’m a mate of her husband’s, Malcolm, and he’s a good sort. I know I’d want someone to do the same for you if the positions had been reversed. Terrible about the babby, though. Christ, Lizzie, you did the right thing sending ours away.
Don’t worry, I’ll write to Ma, telling her to go to Gladys’s. After all, this is war and everyone has to make sacrifices. I doubt I’ll get home, even for the old boy’s funeral. It’s madness here and I think I’m for overseas again, God knows where.
Try to look after yourself.
Love, Steve
Lizzie saw that her mother-in-law had had a similar letter by the set of her grim mouth and the doleful glint in her eyes when she went to the hospital that evening. Gladys and Neil were both there too, and they discussed Rodney’s funeral arrangements with the hospital authorities.
By the turn of the year, Flo and Neil were safely ensconced at Gladys’s and had no desire to leave, even when Sandra agreed to be evacuated with her girls. Lizzie was glad, for she’d seen the girls’ reaction to air raids since they’d been almost entombed on the 19
th
November. When the city had again been attacked in force on the 22
nd
November they’d been reduced to
blubbering wrecks. God, it had been enough to frighten stronger people than those two wee mites she helped Sandra comfort.
That raid had fractured the water pipes coming into Birmingham. No one was told, but everyone seemed to know. Everyone prayed they didn’t have a raid the next night, knowing if it happened that the city would have been burned to the ground. But Hitler’s planes had pummelled the south coastal ports instead.
After that there had been a lull until December, and though the raids then weren’t too fierce, even with those raids the children had been beside themselves with fear.
The doctor gave them a tonic, ‘for they need building up,’ he said. ‘But, that’s only for the short term. In the longer term I would suggest you get them away.’