‘I’ll get my coat. Thanks for the tea, Mrs Cousins.’ She
hesitated, not knowing quite how to say goodbye to Joe. He
stood up too and held out his hand.
‘Good luck, Polly. And mind you remember what we
said, eh? Keep in touch.’ He fished in his pocket and drew
out an envelope. ‘Look, here’s my address. Or you could
send a letter here, care of Edna. And tell me your address I’ll write it down.’ He tore the back off the envelope and
found a stub of pencil.
‘It’s number nine, April Grove,’ Polly said, feeling a little embarrassed under Edna Cousins’s gaze. ‘Portsmouth,
Hants. And - and if you’re ever down that way, mind you
call in. There’s usually someone in.’
They nodded at each other, smiling a little uncertainly,
and then shook hands. Polly thought wistfully of the hug
they had shared so spontaneously out in the street, for all
the world to see, but in here it seemed different. She saw the
same thought in his eyes, and then they heard the
Mayoress’s footsteps approaching again and the moment
passed.
He came out of the front door with them, helped both
women into the car and then stood on the steps to wave
farewell. His sturdy figure, looking suddenly lonely as he
leaned on his stick, was the last thing Polly saw as she
turned the corner.
‘He seems a very nice man,’ the Mayoress remarked as
they drove slowly through the streets, still blocked with
rubble and smoky from the fires that still burned. ‘Have you
known him long?’
‘No,’ Polly said. ‘Not very long.’ But, somehow, she felt
that she had.
It was nearly a fortnight before the next raid on Portsmouth,
and then it was almost laughable compared with what had
gone before, with just a few bombs being dropped into the
sea at Spithead, injuring no one and causing no damage
except, perhaps, to the fish..‘Bombing sprats and herrings
now!’ Tommy Vickers said scornfully when Cissie met him
in the street. ‘I reckon we’ve seen ‘em off, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know, Tommy.’ Cissie shivered, despite the
warmth of the sunshine. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past that
Hitler. They say he’s developing a secret weapon something
worse than anything he’s used before.’
‘The only secret weapon Hitler’s got is fear,’ Tommy told
her. ‘And it hasn’t done much for him so far. All right,
we’re frightened - every time the air-raid warning goes, my
backbone turns to ice - but we don’t let it stop us doing
what we got to do. And I reckon we’re doing the same for
the Germans anyway; our lads are bombing them to bits
every night, same as he’s been doing to us.’
Cissie nodded. She couldn’t feel glad about that, though.
They were ordinary people, she thought, people with homes
and families just like in England. Kiddies in their prams, old
folk like her mother, men like Dick who were still suffering
from the First War. They didn’t deserve to be ‘bombed to
bits’ any more than the people at home.
Jess Budd felt the same. She had invited Cissie down to
number fourteen to tea once or twice, and when Cissie went
into the cosy little back room, crowded with Jess’s piano
against one wall, two armchairs beside the fire and a square
dining table in the middle, she found several other neighbours there too - Jess’s sister Annie Chapman, from
the end of March Street, Tommy’s wife Freda and, since it
was early closing day, white-haired old Mrs Seddon who
kept the little shop on the corner of October Street. The
women all had some knitting to do - nobody sat down these
days without a piece of work in their hands. Maureen Budd,
who was nearly two years old, was playing on the rug in
front of the fireplace with some coloured bricks that had
belonged to her brothers.
‘Your boys getting on all right out at Bridge End?’ Freda
asked, and Jess nodded.
‘Seem to be. I didn’t think they’d take to it, mind, living
with a vicar our Tim’s never been one for church, couldn’t
ever keep still long enough - but Mr Beckett seems to have
a way with boys. Girls too,’ she added. ‘Stella and Muriel
have settled down well, in spite of everything.’
‘Didn’t your Polly take them out there?’ Annie asked
Cissie, passing her a plate of broken biscuits that Mrs
Seddon had brought over.
‘Yes. She liked the old man, and his housekeeper - she’s
the one that looks after them really. Treats the vicar like
another boy, so Polly said.’
Jess smiled. ‘That’s what he is, I reckon. I knew him a bit
when I was there, right at the beginning. Always riding
round on that old bike of his, dressed up in his cassock like a great big bat. And sometimes, when he took the early
service, you could see he was still in his pyjamas underneath!
But he’s a really kind man, and sort of wise too, if you
know what I mean. I always felt he understood a lot more
than he let on. And you could tell him anything - he’d never
be shocked or think you weren’t worth helping. He’s a real
Christian, I suppose.’ She sounded half embarrassed. Most
of those present went to church, if not every week, but none
of them would have felt easy in discussing their beliefs. It
was almost as bad as talking about sex, or cancer.
‘And how about your Judy?’ Mrs Seddon asked. ‘I always remember her popping into the shop as a little girl, when
you came round to see your mum. Such a dear, polite little
soul, holding out her ha’penny and asking for a cone of
lemon drops. Not like some of the children these days,’ she
added, and they all knew who she was thinking about.
Micky Baxter, who lived almost opposite the shop, hardly
knew the words ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.
‘Well, you know she’s out at Ashwood, with little Sylvie,
at the moment,’ Cissie said. ‘We’re hoping the change will
do her good, and some fresh air and country cooking. They
say you can even get butter out there! But of course, that
can’t help her hearing. I don’t know if anything can.’
‘It’s a crying shame.’ Annie Chapman, who had an
opinion on everything, spoke forcefully. ‘Terrible thing to
happen to a young girl. And not long after her young man
had died too. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’
‘Nor do I,’ Jess Budd said. She looked down at Maureen,
who had built a rather lopsided castle with the bricks. ‘Little children being bombed - and it’s not just here, it’s over
there too. I mean, they may be German, but they’re still
kiddies. It doesn’t seem right to me, and even Mr Churchill
himself can’t tell me it is.’
‘It’s war,’ Annie said a little sharply. She was,worrying
about her daughter Betty, who was a Land Girl out near
Bishop’s Waltham, and getting more friendly with a young
man than Annie and her husband Ted liked. The young
man was called Dennis and there was something funny
about him; neither of them could understand why he was
working on a farm, when most young men of his age were in
the Forces. Ted had wondered once or twice if he was a
conscientious objector and told Annie in no uncertain terms
that young Betty needn’t think she could bring him home if
that was the case, because he wouldn’t have him in the
house. Annie couldn’t argue with him, partly because Ted
was going through a bad patch at present himself, and partly
because she agreed with him. Instead, she lay awake at night, going over it all in her mind and not even telling Jess
about her suspicions.
There was a ring on the doorbell and Peggy Shaw’s voice
called out. A moment later she was in the room, looking
flushed and excited. ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened!’
She looked round at them all. ‘Our Gladys is getting a
medal! The British Empire Medal! It’s for what she did the
night of the big raid, when the Royal Hospital got blown up.
Can you credit it - our Gladys with a medal, presented by
the King himself!’
The others stared at her. ‘Well, that’s a turn-up for the
book, and no mistake,’ Annie said at last. ‘Someone in April
Grove getting a medal! You must be ever so pleased, Peggy.’
‘I am.’ Peggy sat down on one of the dining chairs and
took the cup of tea Jess had poured out. ‘Thanks, Jess. Yes,
I am pleased, and proud as Punch. So’s Bert. But our
Gladys doesn’t seem too thrilled about it.’
‘Why ever not?’ The other women stared at her.
‘Well, you know she got a bit knocked about - broken
arm and that - and I suppose she’s still a bit shocked. But
she says she doesn’t deserve it. Says there were plenty of
others did things just as brave - your Polly for one, and
Judy,’ she said to Cissie. ‘And she says it’s Graham
Philpotts that ought to be given it, because he didn’t even
need to be there, he was just helping her, and he got killed.
She’s really upset about that.’
‘Well, I think she deserves it,’ Annie said staunchly, ‘and
so do our Olive and Betty. They were talking about Gladys
yesterday, when Betty came down from Bishop’s Waltham
for her day off. And look at it this way - they can’t give everyone medals, so those that do get them are getting them on behalf of all those others that deserve them. It’s
Graham’s and Polly’s and Judy’s medal, just as much as it’s
Gladys’s, but she happens to be the one that’s been picked
out. That’s all it is.’
Peggy nodded. The flush had faded a little and now she looked worried. ‘The other thing is, she’s made up her mind
to volunteer. Wants to go into the Wrens. She says it’ll
make up a bit for getting Graham killed. My Bert’s none too
pleased, but what can you do? They’ve all had to sign on
anyway but they don’t actually have to go into the Services
till they’re called up. But Gladys wants to go now. And on
top of that, young Diane’s gone and got herself a job at
Airspeed - says she wants to learn to fly, of all things!’
‘Fly?’ Jess echoed. ‘I shouldn’t think she’s got much hope
of that - why, she’s barely sixteen, surely. They’re not going
to take young girls as pilots.’
‘I dunno,’ Peggy said with a sigh. ‘I dunno what they’ll
do. Everything seems turned upside down now.’ She looked
down at the toddler on the rug. ‘Sometimes I wish mine
were all this age again. At least you could have a bit of a say in what happens to them and what they do. What with
Gladys and Diane, and our Bob away in the Army, I just
wonder what it’s all about. It’s not the life we wanted for
them, Jess. It’s not at all.’
‘I wonder if anyone ever does have the life their parents
want for them,’ Jess commented sadly. ‘Look at us. We had
to go through the First War and now, just when we’re
getting on our feet, along comes this one to mess it all up
again. And there’s not a thing we can do about it. It’s out of
our hands.’
Mrs Seddon looked at the little group of women with
their sad faces. She too had been through the Great War,
and could remember even further back, to the Boer War and
other conflicts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
‘What we have to realise,’ she said in her soft voice, ‘is that this is life. All these things that go wrong - little things at home and great things overseas, squabbles in the family and
quarrels between nations — they’re part of life, they happen
over and over again. They always have and they always will.
The important thing, I think, is not what happens to us, but
what we do about it.’ She paused and the women gazed at her. ‘The young people are rising to the occasion, just as
we’d want them to,’ she said. ‘It might not be what we
wanted for them - but they’re acting in just the ways we
would have hoped. I think you can all feel proud - of your
children and yourselves.’ A little pink in the cheeks, she
held out her cup. ‘Is there any more tea in that pot, Mrs
Budd?’
The little tea-party broke up soon after that. The women
rolled up their knitting and left to start preparing tea for
their husbands. Mrs Seddon, who was a widow, went off
saying that she was going to change the window display not
that there was much to display these days, but a new jar
of sherbet lemons had come in this morning and she wanted
to give it pride of place. She crossed the road to her door,
and Cissie, Freda and Annie Chapman walked up the street
together.
‘That was nice, what Mrs Seddon said, wasn’t it?’ Cissie
said. ‘She’s a lovely old lady. All the kiddies love her, you know.’
‘Well, she’s part of April Grove, isn’t she,’ Annie said. ‘I
can’t remember a time when she wasn’t there in that little
shop, weighing out biscuits and sweets and dried fruit. I
wonder sometimes how she manages to make a living, now
that everything’s on ration. But I reckon she’s right, you
know, about all this being a part of life. Wars always have
happened and I don’t suppose they’ll ever stop happening.
Look at what they said about the last one - the “war to end
all wars”, they called it. And here we are again, barely
twenty years later, worse than ever. Not that the youngsters