The Bells of Bow (12 page)

‘About nineteen, twenty maybe.’

‘What yer mean, he’s going away to sea and he’s never—’

‘Evie!’ Babs opened her eyes wide. ‘Shut up or Dad’ll hear yer.’

‘No he won’t.’ Evie jerked her head towards the door. ‘He’s through in the front room. Got his nose stuck in the paper before he goes down for his pint. And he’s got the wireless on. He won’t be able to hear a thing. So, come on, tell us about this sailor.’

‘Well, keep yer noise down and I will.’

Evie rolled her eyes impatiently. ‘Gawd, it’s like pulling teeth.’

‘We went for a drink in the Aunt Sally.’ Babs glared at her sister’s sudden change of expression. ‘And there’s no need to turn yer nose up like that, neither. We can’t all have fellers with motor cars.’

‘All right, get on with it.’

‘And then they walked us back to Lou’s in Eric Street.’

‘In the blackout, eh?’

‘And yer can take that expression right off yer face and all.’ Babs’s tone was prim, but she was smiling as she spoke. ‘All right,’ she relented. ‘They did the obvious. They pulled us into a shop doorway.’ She leant across the table towards Evie and whispered, ‘And yer know how dark it is out there now.’

‘Babs Bell, you didn’t? Not in a shop doorway in Burdett Road!’

‘No, I did not.’ Babs laughed out loud. ‘Still, a bit of a kiss and cuddle can’t hurt no one, can it? Cheered him up, anyway.’ She studied the potato that she had almost whittled away to nothing. ‘He’s gonna love me for ever, he reckons. Been looking for a girl like me all his life.’

Evie reached across the table and shoved Babs on the shoulder. ‘So what’s his name then, this sailor boy who’s gonna love yer for ever and take yer away from me?’

Babs put her hand to her face and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Er … Sid, I think. Or was it Joe? No, hang on, it might have been Cyril …’

Evie nudged her again and they both burst into a fit of giggles.

When they’d got themselves under control, Babs said quietly, ‘No, be serious a minute. I don’t mean Sid necessarily – that
was
his name by the way – but yer know, I really would like to have someone like him. Someone who’s really interested in me. Who cares.’ Babs dropped the now tiny piece of potato into the saucepan. ‘Who knows what might have happened if these had been different times.’

‘Hark at you, yer daft mare. We’ve got the pick o’ the fellers round here. Just like we always have. Yer could be out with a different one every night if yer felt like it.’

‘I weren’t talking about that.’ Babs stood up and went back to the sink. She fiddled about with the colander, draining the water from the chopped cabbage leaves. ‘Evie, I know I’ve been a bit horrible lately – about you and Albie, I mean.’

Evie was immediately on the defensive. ‘You ain’t gonna start on that again, are yer?’

‘No. I just wanna say something that’s been bothering me.’ She sighed and turned round from the sink to face her sister, but she changed her mind and looked down at the lino instead. ‘Yer know when yer was joking about Sid taking me away from yer, well, that’s how I’ve felt about Albie and you.’

‘Babs, it was a joke. I never—’

‘No. Please, let me say it. I said I was worried about yer seeing him, and I am, but it’s more than that. I think I’m jealous of him.’ Babs swallowed hard, trying to stop her voice from cracking. ‘Jealous that he was gonna take yer away from me and I was gonna be left all alone. We ain’t never been apart like this before, have we?’ She took a long deep breath and looked up at her sister. ‘I’m scared that everything’s gonna change, Evie.’

‘Yer silly cow.’ Evie pushed back her chair and threw her arms round her sister. ‘No one could ever take us away from each other, Babs. No one.’

Babs looked up through her tears. ‘I hope not.’

The sound of their dad’s loud complaints from the front room made them both look towards the open kitchen door.

‘Bloody load of old nonsense,’ they heard him holler. ‘What’s flaming Poland gotta do with us over here? That’s what I wanna know.’

The twins frowned questioningly at each other. ‘Poland?’ they both said.

‘Sod me!’ Ringer shouted even louder this time.

On her way into the front room to see what was wrong, Babs rolled down one of the sleeves of her blouse and wiped her eyes on the flowery material.

‘What’s the matter, Dad?’ Evie sat herself down on the arm of his over-stuffed chair.

‘It’s the Prime Minister speaking from Downing Street.’

Babs smiled at Evie. ‘Sid told me that Chamberlain’d be on the wireless this morning.’

‘Sssh!’ Georgie shook his head urgently then looked at each of his daughters in turn. ‘It’s the Germans. They say they ain’t gonna pull their troops out o’ Poland.’

Babs was about to say something else, but Evie got in first. ‘What’s Poland got to …’ she began, but the Prime Minister’s ominous words echoing from the wireless in the corner of the room silenced even her.

‘… consequently,’ he went on, ‘this country is at war with Germany.’

The words stunned the three of them, just as they were stunning people all over Britain.

‘But …’ Babs dropped down into the armchair across the hearth from the one in which her dad and sister were sitting. ‘But how can we be at war? He did say war, didn’t he, Dad?’

Georgie nodded silently.

‘But war can’t happen, not on a day like this.’ Babs stared up at the window where only two nights ago she had thought that hanging the blackout curtains had been such a waste of time. ‘Look at that lovely blue sky now that that storm’s blown over. How can war happen when the sun’s shining?’

Evie stood up and went over to the window, moving slowly as if she were in a dream. ‘What’ve we gotta do, d’yer suppose?’

‘Remember,’ Georgie said solemnly, ‘that’s what we’ve gotta do.’

‘Remember what?’ Evie turned round; she looked confused.

‘How things are this morning, ’cos nothing’s ever gonna be the same again.’

‘Dad!’ Babs looked at Evie who had now gone as white as the lace edging on the chairbacks had once been. ‘Don’t talk like that, yer frightening her.’

Georgie stared into the empty grate. ‘If half the stories the old boys used to tell us about the Great War were true, she should be bleed’n frightened.’

‘Don’t, Dad, now yer scaring me and all.’ Babs went over to Evie and put her arm round her sister’s shoulders.

Less than a quarter of a mile from Darnfield Street, Maudie Peters was in St Dorothea’s Church playing the piano for the morning service. She had just struck up the opening chords of ‘Now Thank We All Our God’ when the local beat constable poked his head warily round the metal-studded, heavy wooden door. Not being a religions man himself he always felt awkward in churches, not sure quite what to do or how to behave. He hovered around the doorway for a moment but, knowing that action was called for, he took a deep breath, removed his bicycle clips and strode self-consciously up the aisle with his tin hat tucked under his arm. First he went over to the piano and whispered something to Maudie who immediately stopped playing. Then he shuffled sheepishly over to where the vicar was standing by the pulpit. ‘’Scuse me, Mr Forsythe, sir,’ he said to the vicar. ‘Sorry to interrupt the service and everything. But I thought you ought to know that just a minute or two ago it was announced that we’re at war with Germany, sir.’

Gasps of horror echoed around the high, vaulted stone ceiling of St Dorothea’s as the appalled parishioners took in the constable’s mumbled words. Like the Reverend Clifford Forsythe, many of the mainly elderly congregation were old enough to have nightmare-inducing memories of the Great War. In fact it had been the part the vicar had played as a young officer in that conflict that had resulted in his determination to enter the Church in the first place. He had made up his mind to dedicate his life to serving a parish where the congregation was made up of working people just like those whose sons, husbands and brothers he felt he had sent to such terrible, wasteful, pointless deaths in the mud and gore of no-man’s land.

He closed his eyes and the all too familiar images of death came flooding back to him. When, only a few seconds later, he opened his eyes, he was momentarily surprised to find himself not in the death-stained fields of Flanders but in the cool, stone interior of the church where he had served for almost twenty years. With an almost imperceptible shake of his head in an attempt to clear his mind, he stepped forward and grasped the edge of the front pew, trying to disguise the trembling in his hands. ‘Those of us here today with memories of war will understand that there will be no sermon today.’ He spoke in what he hoped was a reassuring tone but he could barely hide the quaver that threatened to crack his voice. ‘Prayers are all that are needed today.’

Many of his flock who were already standing, unsure whether they should leave, hastily sank to their knees.

‘But prayers can be said anywhere. This is a time to be with those you love, so go home to your families and may the Lord go with you all.’ With a gesture of blessing, Clifford Forsythe turned on his heel and disappeared into the vestry.

With those words of permission and following their vicar’s example, everyone rushed out as quickly as they dared without looking impious, everyone, that is, except Maudie Peters. She stood up and carefully folded her music, put the tidy sheaf of loose sheets away in the piano seat and then walked slowly outside into the cramped churchyard of St Dorothea’s. She walked, almost reluctantly, over to the black-painted iron railings where her bicycle rested, its empty basket turned towards her. She didn’t even have anything to put in it, she thought, not a bag, not a bunch of flowers, nothing. It was empty, just like her house in Darnfield Street. She wished, as she wheeled the high-framed bicycle to the gate, that she had left it at home; people must have thought it a ridiculous thing to do, riding the thing such a short distance. But worse than what people thought was the choking feeling of depression which filled her chest when she admitted to herself the real reason she had brought her bike – to support her pathetic pretence of having somewhere to go after the service, so that no one would feel sorry for her. All she was actually going to do was ride round and round Victoria Park for an hour or so in order to put off the dreaded time when she would eventually have to go home to her lonely Sunday lunch of bread and cheese and maybe an apple – if she could be bothered to eat anything at all. But after what the constable had told them, she supposed that she should go straight home.

As Maudie freewheeled along Grove Road, slowing down for the turn into Darnfield Street, she, and all the other people who heard them, could hardly believe it – the air raid sirens started their wailing, flesh-creeping warnings. It was impossible to accept that only seven short minutes after war had been declared, the country was already under threat from what everyone would now have to think of as the Enemy. Maudie wasn’t sure why she did it, but she got off her bike outside the Chambers’ baker’s shop on the corner of Darnfield Street and stood watching her neighbours, most of whom she hardly knew, as they reacted in their own ways to the threat of attack. Frankie Morgan appeared in his doorway at number eight, the last house but one from the canal end of the street. He was not a young man, but he went hurtling into the middle of the road barking out his official orders as he fastened the buttons of his jacket.

‘For Christ’s sake, take cover!’ he yelled, frantically signalling with his arms. He started to make his way up the street towards the open Grove Road end, but he only got as far the Bells’s when he skidded to a halt and turned back the way he had come. He sprinted over the road to the Jenners’s at number nine and bashed on the already open street door with his knuckles. ‘Turn yer gas off in there, Liz,’ he shouted at the top of his voice, trying to make himself heard over the eerie scream of the sirens. ‘Yer can forget cooking yer dinner, there’s a raid on out here!’

Liz’s husband Ted came to the door in his vest with his braces dangling round his knees. ‘We ain’t deaf, Frankie. Now keep it down, for gawd’s sake. I’m having enough trouble trying to keep the kids calm.’

‘Don’t give me calm,’ hollered Frankie, pointing at his warden’s armband. ‘I’m an official, I am.’

Ted’s wife Liz came to the door, jiggling a crying baby up and down in her arms. ‘Ted, yer’ll have to do something. They’re all in a right state in there. Yer gran’s going on about Zeppelins and all that stuff in the papers about gas and bombing raids and everything. Aw, Ted, what we gonna do?’

‘Get ’em all in the bleed’n surface shelter, that’s what,’ shouted Frankie. He jerked his thumb angrily towards a makeshift-looking brick building that the council had erected in the middle of the road between the Jenners’ place and number ten, the house opposite that had been empty for years because of the water that had leaked in from the canal practically since the day it had been built.

Liz looked pleadingly at her husband. ‘Should we, Ted? What d’yer think? It don’t look very safe to me.’

‘Don’t bloody ask him.’ Frankie was fuming. ‘I’m the sodding warden round here, not yer old man. Now, Lizzie Jenner, are yer gonna get them kids and Ted’s old granny in that shelter, or d’yer wanna get their heads all blown off?’

Liz burst into panic-stricken tears. ‘Are yer sure it’s safe in there for me kids, Mr Morgan?’ she sobbed.

Frankie didn’t answer, he had other things to worry about; with a flourish of his armband, he straightened his tin hat and made off up the street to check on the rest of his charges.

‘I bet yer ain’t made your Ethel go in there, yer wouldn’t dare!’ Ted shouted after him and led his now trembling wife back into the house to try and persuade them all to go into the shelter, or at least to stop crying.

Frankie didn’t hear, he was too busy banging loudly on Maudie Peters’s street door. If he hadn’t got himself so worked up with the Jenners he would have noticed that Maudie had been standing outside the baker’s and was now wheeling her bike along the road towards him.

‘It’s all right, Mr Morgan,’ she called to him. ‘I’m here. I’m going straight into the shelter.’