Till the Sun Shines Through (38 page)

Mickey came into his own one cold windswept day when he introduced Katie to the public library. ‘Did you know you can borrow books for nothing?' Katie asked her mother that night.

‘I heard something about it.'

‘It's great, Mammy. There are loads of books, shelves and shelves of them, and you have to be real quiet and talk in whispers. Mickey said if you sign the form I can get books out of my own. He said I can have a picture book for myself and another one that he will read to me. You'll sign it won't you, Mammy?'

Bridie signed the form with pleasure, glad to see her small daughter so entertained, but the culmination of it all was the trip to the Lickey Hills, where they'd gone all the way to the terminus on the tram and played hide and seek in the woods and ate the picnic Ellen had made for them in the green fields. Jay had once again carried tired Katie on his back to the tram on their return.

But while Katie was enjoying her holiday from school and the attention of her cousins, the first bomb fell in Erdington.

‘Thought we were supposed to have sirens when enemy planes are coming our way,' Ellen said.

‘This was only one,' Sam told her. ‘Must have slipped through. They said they thought he was on his way to the Dunlop, but couldn't find it and dropped his load in Erdington.'

‘Nice of him,' Mary remarked. ‘I suppose now the canals are boarded over every night, it is harder to find.'

‘Aye,' Sam said. ‘Good idea that was, with all those factories on the Lichfield and Tyburn Road backing onto the canal, not to mention the one running alongside the Dunlop place and on up to the Vicker's factory on the Chester Road. God, any bomber seeing the glint in his lights could have had a field day and wiped out a lot of factories making things to win this war with no trouble at all.'

‘I suppose we should be grateful there was only the one man killed and five injured,' Ellen said. ‘But you can't help feeling that that man is someone's son, and he was but a teenager with his life before him yet.'

‘And all those shattered houses,' Bridie put in, looking at the pictures in the
Evening Mail
. The houses stood glassless and sometimes roofless, the windows and doors blown out and the stuff inside the sagging walls a heap of rubble. ‘Where will they live now?' Bridie asked. ‘How will they manage?'

‘The authorities will have it organised,' Sam said. ‘And although it's sad for those people, we should think ourselves lucky – the south coast has been pounded for weeks: Ramsgate, where Eddie and Tom were until just a short while ago, and Southsea, Portsmouth and Dover, of course. Trying to smash the coastal defences, you see, and destroy shipping – Hitler's intent on invasion.'

A shiver of apprehension ran through the three women and then Bridie said, ‘If the raids are to happen, you can all come in to me. It'll be better being together and the cellar should be quite safe.' Mary was agreeable but Ellen said nothing. She knew Sam would probably not survive another winter: the doctor had confided in her that his heart and lungs were both in poor shape and she knew that for he could barely walk a few paces now without becoming breathless. She doubted it would do him any good to get out of a warm bed and traipse downstairs to their own cellar, let alone roam the streets to someone else's. But she didn't want to load this on Mary and Bridie's shoulders, nor give Sam any inkling of how sick he was so she kept these thoughts to herself.

On 13
^th
August the bombers returned, the Vickers factory making the Lancasters and Spitfires in Castle Bromwich their target. Five workers were killed there and two in houses nearby. Two days later, bombs fell in Hay Mills, Small Heath and Bordesly Green.

‘Where are the bloody sirens for those places?' Sam declared furiously. ‘I thought they had watchers out who'd warn people to take cover. A policeman pedalling a bike and blowing a whistle doesn't have the same effect.'

Most thought the same and the raids continued every night, lasting an average of five hours. As all industry was now mostly war-related and small factories were often cheek by jowl amongst and between the back-to-back housing, civilian casualties were rising. Everyone now had a tale to tell about dreadful tragedies, or miraculous escapes.

Not used to sirens sounding, when they did wail out on 25
^th
August, they nearly lifted Bridie out of her chair in which she was dozing. She was tired; for although no raids had happened in that area, the crashes and explosions had been near enough to drive sleep from her, near enough some nights for her to rouse the children and creep down into the cellar.

The children thought it was a great game altogether and when eventually it grew quiet and Bridie deemed it safe to return to bed, they were loath to do so and were difficult to settle. Talking with the women at work, Bridie found most mothers with young children were having the same problem.

‘It's as if Hitler's playing cat and mouse with us anyway,' another put in. ‘Targeting a small area at a time, like.'

‘Aye, but you don't know when it's going to be your area,' Bridie said, ‘so you take shelter anyway.'

‘Too right, you do,' another said. ‘I don't want any of those buggers landing on me or mine.'

When the siren went off, it was just after they'd eaten tea so the children were ready for, but not in, bed and so Bridie ran upstairs and pulled blankets off her bed before hustling them down to the cellar, remembering first to pick up her shelter bag, which she always left ready by the door. All women had a shelter bag and in Bridie's there were ration books and identity cards, the post office book, insurance policies and treasured photographs. As she went down the stairs, Mary and her two boys came in the entry door. Bridie thanked God she'd have company, but asked anxiously, ‘Are Ellen and Sam coming in too?'

‘Don't think so,' Mary told her sister. ‘Sam's wheezing a fair bit these last few days and although the days are still nice and warm, the nights can be chilly.'

Mary was right, but Bridie wasn't sure if it was the cold that was making her shiver so. At first the crashes and explosions were in the distance and then Katie and Liam, lulled to sleep on Bridie's and Mary's laps, were laid on the cushions Jay had run up and taken from the armchairs.

But they hadn't been long asleep when the pattern of explosions changed and they heard the drone of the approaching bombers coming their way and the barking ack-ack guns trying to bring them down. The first explosions made them jump and Mary and Bridie clutched at each other, the boys between them.

The children stirred on their makeshift beds and eventually Katie opened her eyes. Liam's were still tight shut, but he'd begun to whimper and so Bridie knew he was awake. So did Katie. ‘Liam's crying, Mammy. He's scared,' she said, her own voice wobbly with fear.

She didn't have to say she was scared; her wide staring eyes spoke for her. Then a bomb fell extremely close and Katie gave a yelp of terror and leapt towards her mother. Liam began to sob in earnest.

Bridie lifted both of the children onto her knee and held them tight. ‘When will it stop?' Katie asked.

Bridie shook her head hopelessly. ‘I don't know, love.'

‘I don't like it,' Liam complained.

‘No one likes it, Liam,' Bridie replied. ‘The thing to remember is that it's just a big noise. We're as safe as houses here in the cellar.'

It wasn't true, but it satisfied Katie and Liam and, besides, she had to tell them something. They were too young to deal with this. Mickey and even Jay were only weans too and she read the fear on their faces as well.

The clamour went on around them and Bridie felt her children jump at any close explosion and Liam had put his fingers in his ears more than once.

By the time the all clear had sounded, the children had dropped off, despite the noise, cuddled up to her. She hadn't been able to sleep herself during the raid, so she'd sat tense and awake, seeing the cellar walls shake and the mortar dribble out from the bricks, thinking each moment might be her last.

She smiled tentatively at her sister now. ‘Bit too close for comfort, that lot.'

‘Aye,' Mary replied. ‘There will be some damage, I'm thinking.' She glanced across at her boys, their faces white with weariness and fear. ‘I'd best get these home, but I'll give you a hand with the weans first.'

Bridie was glad of the offer of help. Mary gently lifted Liam from her sister's knee and carried him in her arms while Bridie readjusted her hold on Katie and followed her sister up the cellar steps.

It was as they entered the room that both women were attacked by a fit of coughing, caused by the dust swirling in the air that caught in their throats. They crossed to the window and saw the orange skyline. ‘Something's on fire,' Mary said and Bridie nodded, unable to speak. ‘And not too far away.'

It was the Market Hall in the Bull Ring, they found out the next day. The raid had removed the roof, reducing the building to a shell and destroying the magnificent clock, made of solid oak, to ashes. Bridie thought of the day Tom had told her the tale of the clock and the curse put upon it by the one who made it. Well, Hitler helped to make the curse come true, she thought. But however sorry she was for the clock's demise, people were more important and she felt heartsore for those injured or killed so far into the war.

That night there was another raid, but it had been too far away for Bridie and Mary to take to the cellar at first. It had begun just after midnight and Bridie had been in a deep sleep when the sirens woke her. The drone of approaching planes alarmed her and she realised they were much nearer, almost overhead. She jumped from her bed and, pulling a coat over her nightdress, roused the children in the attic, pulling blankets from the bed to wrap around them as the bombs landed nearby. Fear lent speed to the children who were very sleepy.

The time was half past three and Bridie wasn't surprised that her sister didn't join her. The raid was too loud and close for anyone to sleep and the children whimpered in fear while Bridie held them close, one on each side of her, in the rolled-up blanket. She crooned and sang to them, trying to take their minds away from what was happening above and praying earnestly that they might get out alive.

The next day, at work, she heard the main thrust of the raid had been around Snow Hill Station, taking in Summer Row, Edmund Street, Livery Street and St Paul's Square, so small wonder it had appeared close. This information was printed on notices spread about the city. Birmingham wasn't usually referred to by name in the national papers, but just known as a Midlands town, so as to not give the enemy any information on where they had struck and caused extensive damage, though the Birmingham papers – the
Birmingham Post
, the
Evening Mail
, the
Gazette
and
Evening Despatch
– mentioned it occasionally.

‘Why don't they say what's happening to us in those other papers?' Ellen demanded irritably on the evening of 28
^th
August. ‘Other towns and cities are mentioned.'

‘Don't be daft, woman,' Sam snapped. ‘What d'you think it is, some kind of competition? They don't want Jerry to know that they've actually hit their target, that's why.'

But mentioned or not, every night there was a raid. The effect of those terrifying raids was apparent in the morning light. People had to get used to walking to work because the tram lines were lifted, and to seeing rubble-filled holes where there'd once been shops, offices and houses. The dust and the cordite smell lingered and pavements were often running with water. Sodden sandbags leaked sand onto pavements strewn with bricks, charred beams and snaking hose pipes and shards of glass splintered beneath people's feet.

But while Birmingham and other towns and cities throughout Britain were enduring nightly raids, devastation and death, Hitler had massed his invasion fleet on the other side of the English Channel. The RAF, to prevent the invasion taking place, took on the might of the Luftwaffe in a series of air battles that later became known as ‘The Battle of Britain'.

On 7
^th
September, London was attacked for the first time when three hundred bombers headed for the docks. This was seen as part of the build-up to invasion.

Everyone was on alert, the Home Guard mustering its members together, but by the end of the day there was no movement of German ships towards Britain. High alert stayed in force all the next day and night whilst the RAF continued to dispel the enemy.

One of the workers who worked alongside Bridie and Mary came to work in great excitement one day having witnessed a dog-fight between a German Stuka plane and a Spitfire above her house. ‘Seen nothing so exciting in my whole life,' she said. ‘There was a crowd of us cheering our bloke on.'

‘He won, I suppose?' one woman asked.

‘'Course he bleeding well won. Didn't let up on the other one. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat – on and on it went. And then they both wheeled and dodged. One minute the Spitfire was above the other and before the German plane had time to turn around, he'd dived below him and when he tried to follow, the Spitfire was up and to the one side of him and then the other. The German plane hadn't a chance. Eventually, it began to lose height, smoke spiralling out the back of it and the plane spun round, and hit the ground and exploded. I cheered and shouted till my bleeding throat was sore, I'll tell you.'

‘Wish I'd seen it,' another said.

Bridie could understand, well understand their attitude, and yet she couldn't get the idea out of her head that the pilot was somebody's son, maybe a favoured brother, or a beloved daddy. But she knew such views would be unpopular and possibly misunderstood and therefore kept them to herself.

On 15
^th
September, the RAF defeated the Luftwaffe in a large aerial battle. Hitler had failed to knock out the airfields or the anti-aircraft weapons, or destroy ports on the south coast, and now his famed Luftwaffe had been vanquished by the British. He put his invasion plans on hold, at least for that year.