Polly's Angel (36 page)

‘Dear me, measles can be nasty,' Deirdre said, finishing off a row and flicking her work around to begin the next. ‘Oh, me darlin' Polly, war work comes in a lot of different forms. Don't fret yourself; in the not very distant future you'll be joining the forces – the WRNs, I mean – I've no doubt of that. But until you do, keep on with those letters and little parcels, and don't forget that if you didn't have your good job you wouldn't be able to buy treats for Mart and Sunny.'

‘Good job!' Polly said witheringly, but she pulled the pad of paper towards her again. ‘I know I'm almost the only one left in the office wit' decent shorthand and speedy typing, the only one young enough to run messages over half Liverpool, but I'm not one whit appreciated, Mammy. Mr Slater would sack me tomorrer if he thought he could replace me with someone else.'

‘Well, you've the satisfaction of knowing he can't—' Deirdre was beginning when someone knocked on the kitchen door, at first feebly and then with such a rattle that Polly fairly flew across the room to open it. It was November, and a wild night, with a high wind howling along the narrow street and when she wrenched at the door it was not only a slender, storm-battered creature who tumbled inside, but a miniature gale, as well as a good few dead leaves and a gust of rain. The girl in the dark coat began pulling off the garment even as Polly said hospitably, ‘Evenin', Monica! You're quite a one for making an entrance, aren't you! I thought you were living it up in Southport, what on earth are you doing here?' She began to help her sister-in-law out of her wet coat. ‘Oh, don't say Martin's coming home again!' she exclaimed, remembering the last time Monica had come rapping on their door. ‘When did you hear? He and Sunny are on the same ship, you know, which means they'll both be back!'

Monica gave a moan and pulled off hat and gloves, dropping them on the floor with a complete disregard for the linoleum, which had been brushed and mopped clean directly after the family's high tea. Then she produced a crumpled half-sheet of yellow paper and held it out to Peader, who had stood up to greet her with his customary hug and whose face, at the sight of that piece of paper, lost all its colour and looked suddenly haggard and old.

‘H-he's missing,' Monica said brokenly. ‘H-his ship went down . . . There was a battle . . . It was weeks ago, but the Admiralty waited . . . Oh Dad, I can't bear it!'

Chapter Eleven

M
ARCH
1942

Polly put the rest of her gear into her canvas issue kitbag and took a last, leisurely look around her, at the room where she and her friends had spent a good deal of their lives over the last six months. She was sorry to leave it in a way, but Scotland was a very long way from home, and though she had enjoyed herself well enough, learning her job, getting to know the other WRNs, she had often been homesick for Liverpool, for her family and friends.

She remembered her many moans in civvy life about letter-writing; how her letters to her brothers, to Sunny and Tad and Grace, had seemed so dull, with nothing very much to say. Yet she soon realised that life in the services, fascinating though it might be, did not take away her letter-writing chores, and because of the censor, her service letters might well be as dull as her civvy ones had been, for though the scenes in which they were set were more interesting to her, they concerned people that her correspondents had never met, with only occasional remarks about Liverpool, or her parents, to make them more personal.

What had really changed her life first of all, of course, had been Martin's ship going down, and Martin being lost. With the first real tragedy that she had ever suffered, the war had become personal to her. She thought of Martin with a deep and painful grief, because they had not been as close as they might have been, because she had not liked his wife, had disapproved of his marriage. So it was partly guilt that had sent her marching into the insurance office to tell Mr Slater what to do with his job – that had given her enormous satisfaction – and then she had gone along to the parachute factory in Hanover Street where her mother worked and signed on with them. Making parachutes had been fun, she had enjoyed the company, the chatter, and the feeling that she was doing her bit to kick old Hitler in the goolies – not her own expression, Bev's – but it had not quite made up for the impersonality of it. For many weeks after the news of Martin's fate she had felt angry, felt that she wanted to see some damned Jerry suffer the way her parents – and Monica – were suffering because of what they had done. Munitions might have been better, knowing that the shells and bullets would actually go to kill the hated enemy, but munitions dyed your skin the most awful yellow colour which would not, Polly had decided judicially, have gone very well with her yellow curls. So she had stuck to making parachutes, putting a great deal of care and enthusiasm into the task, until the May Blitz.

Deirdre had been working at the time in the Hanover Street parachute factory in the old Littlewoods building, and she and Polly had been on the night shift with high explosive bombs and fire bombs raining down on the city, when it was considered too dangerous to allow the workers to stay at their machines, but it had been no joke trying to make their way home, either. The streets had been chaotic. Walking to work together earlier that evening Polly and her mother had talked about the destruction caused the previous night: Lime Street Station had been hit, so trains were no longer running from there and fire bombs had landed on the Crawford Biscuit Works, totally destroying it. ‘Not that they were making biscuits,' Deirdre had said darkly. ‘Oh, I wouldn't mind a nice packet of custard creams, right this minute.'

But that had been before half past ten when this raid had started with a ferocity that Liverpool had never known before. It had been bad enough when they were both working, with other girls chattering to distract them from the mayhem outside, but walking through the streets lit by fires from buildings which only hours before had looked impregnable was truly terrifying. It did not seem possible that their factory could possibly escape, but neither did it seem likely that the two of them would reach home safely.

However, they had done so, and Peader, fire watching in the city centre, had also been unhurt, though he had not returned home until lunchtime the following day.

It had been the worst eight days of Polly's life. The destruction had seemed to be total. The overhead railway had been hit two or three times as had ordinary rail lines, making travel by such means impossible. Blackler's, where Polly had worked as a schoolgirl, and Lewis's, where she and her mother had shopped, were no more. Bankhall Bridge was destroyed, effectively cutting off the city from the north, and there had been considerable loss of life. Despite the fact that St Sylvester's had been razed to the ground, that her old school had been bombed almost out of existence and that Silvester Street itself had been gutted, the O'Bradys and their neighbours had suffered no fatalities. The barrage balloon site at the end of their road had been a casualty, though; none of the cheery RAF personnel had lived when the bombs had started fires which had destroyed their accommodation, their supplies of hydrogen, and their vast, inflated charges, which had taken to the air, casting flames on everything below, until they had burned out. Polly had got to know the Bops – balloon operatives – pretty well, and hated to think that those bright-eyed young men were all dead, but she had not known them as she had known Martin.

So when the May Blitz ceased, the O'Bradys had been left with a windowless, doorless, almost roofless house and no means of making it whole again, not whilst the shortages of building materials lasted. Peader, however, said that they had got their lives, which was what mattered, and shortly after the house had been pronounced unfit for occupation had calmly moved them out to a small, draughty bungalow on Morton Shore, owned by an elderly woman whose husband had been killed on his way home from a night-shift in the city and who was nervous, she said, of living alone through such times.

‘It's her house, the place she and her husband saved for and bought when they were first married, so the good God alone knows how we'll all get on together, because two women into one kitchen usually don't go,' Deirdre had said doubtfully to her daughter, when Peader had announced the plan. ‘But anything's better than this.' She had gestured around her, at the church hall where they had been told to stay until they found somewhere better. ‘It's bedrooms which will be most difficult, because it's a two-bedroomed bungalow, which means one for Mrs Marshall and one for the rest of us. But you can have a bed on the couch in the living room, I daresay, and when the boys and Grace come home we'll manage something. Besides, you know how practical your daddy is – he'll find some way of getting the Titchfield Street house put right before too long, you mark my words.'

But Polly had had enough of being a dutiful daughter and doing her best to please parents who, she had long ago realised, had no intention of going off to some safe haven, either in England or Ireland, and who were perfectly capable of looking after themselves.

‘I'm going to join the WRNs, Mammy, so count me out when you come to dividing up the bungalow bedrooms,' she had said airily. ‘I'm old enough, so I am, and I've been wantin' to do me bit ever since . . . well, for a year or more. I wouldn't have left you and me daddy whilst you were living in Titchfield Street, in the heart of the city, but out at Morton Shore you should be safe enough – as safe as you'll let yourselves be, that is.'

So Polly had joined the WRNs, had agreed to serve anywhere she was sent, and was duly despatched to Scotland, where she and her fellow-entrants had been trained for the work they were to do. Now she had a long and complicated train journey ahead of her, which would no doubt be further complicated by the heavy snow which still lay thick on the ground here in the north, but at the end of it there would be an interesting new posting – and who knew what she might have to learn when she reached Holyhead, on the Isle of Anglesey?

Once the train was on the move and was crowded with service personnel and a few civilians, mainly mothers with small children, going about their normal business, Polly got out her writing pad, albeit with a martyred sigh. She had best write to everyone she knew, telling them about her posting, so that she might receive letters when she got to Anglesey. Life, she mused as she got out her fountain pen, had a way of giving with one hand and snatching back with the other. Letters must be written no matter what.

It was not easy to write letters on the train, but fortunately in one sense at least, there were a good few hold-ups, when Polly's pen fairly sped across the page. Tad was still in Yorkshire with his beloved Beaufighters, but Grace had moved to Norfolk, where she seemed to spend a good deal of her time trying to keep out of the wind which, she said, blew constantly across the great flat expanses of the countryside. Polly knew she would have to write to them both – and Sunny – and send them her new address but decided that, for once, she would write them just the one page. To Tad first. Tad who she hadn't seen since her childhood, but who she still missed.

Despite himself, for he was a man grown now, Tad thought a good deal about Polly, though he usually thought of her as she had been when he had last seen her, a child of ten with a mop of primrose-coloured curls and such sweet and loving ways that she had been universally adored. She had been a little imp, but everyone had loved her and when she left Dublin to go with her parents to Liverpool, in England, how horribly he had missed her! There had been no one like Polly for sticking by a feller, no one like her to share in your adventures.

He thought about Polly more because of Angela's defection, of course. Poor Angela. She had hated having to break it to him that she'd met someone else but thank the good Lord she had had the courage to do it. The world was full of pretty girls eager to make an airman's life happier and Tad did not intend to deprive them of his charms. Polly was an old mate but she was not here. And truth to tell, he had been finding it hard, for some time, to bring Angela's face into his mind's eye when he wanted to remember her. It got muddled up with his memories of Polly – so much stronger, even after their long parting – so that Angela's pale, well-tended face with its elegant little nose and light blue eyes became confused with Polly's rosy, wickedly dimpled smiles; whilst Polly's sturdy ten-year-old body got equally muddled up with Angela's slender waist and firmly jutting breasts. Tad supposed somewhat doubtfully that Polly, too, would have a proper waist, and nice, rounded breasts by now, but somehow he could not imagine it. He could only see
his
Polly, the one he had teased and tickled and bawled at and comforted all those years ago. She had asked him tearfully to help her when she needed help and had shouted rudely at him to leave her alone now and bleedin' well buzz off when she was cross. And, peculiarly enough, he missed her.

There was his work, the most absorbing, exciting, challenging work that Tad had ever embarked upon.

He serviced the engines of the Beaufighters which flew from his station. He treated every plane as though it was the most important piece of machinery on the station, and not only that, as though he felt personally responsible for the slightest failure. He knew, to the last note, how an engine should sound.

Because of this, the pilots in his squadron began to offer him short trips in the planes, whenever a test-flight was needed after he had done a repair. And because of his interest, they began to show him how they flew the planes. As a result of this, no sooner were they off the ground than Tad would take over the controls, and he grew daily more expert, even landing – and taking off – more than once.