‘Thank you, madam.’ Polly withdrew. Evidently there
was going to be no driving for her to do that day, so she
began to collect tasks from the other women in the office
and then went to her desk.
Judy was planning to fetch Jean and bring her out to
Southsea that afternoon. Before beginning on any of her
tasks, Polly started to investigate the help that Jean could
ask for, and the possibilities of evacuation.
If she could go out to Ashwood, or Bridge End, where
there were already people they knew, Polly was sure she
would find kindness and warmth. Country people, in her
experience, were more likely to accept you for what you
were and not what they might think you ought to be. There,
with people like the Suttons, she would be able to grieve
properly for Terry and look forward to the birth of her baby
- the baby called Hope.
Crete had fallen and, as Dick had predicted, there was an
evacuation not very different from that of Dunkirk. Fighting
on the island had been bitter, but the German invaders had
been too powerful and the Royal Navy had been sent in to
bring out as many men as possible. This time, many of the
Allied soldiers who were killed or rescued were from New
Zealand and Australia. Once again, there were stories of
heroism and suffering and, once again, there was grieving
over men who had been lost.
‘I can’t bear to think about it,’ Cissie said. ‘Mothers in
Australia and New Zealand feeling just as bad as me and all
the rest of us who’ve lost their boys. Wives like you, Polly,
and girls like our Judy. Kiddies like Sylvie.’
‘Don’t,’ Polly begged. ‘It’s no good going on like that,
Cis. It just makes you feel worse. You’ve got to try and
think about other things.’
‘Other things?’ Cissie was pale and drawn. Her eyes were
dull and her hair lank and straggly, with signs of grey. ‘How can I think of other things? I’ve lost my boy. The boy I
carried for nine months inside me, and fed with my own
milk, and loved and looked after — he’s gone, Polly. I’m
never going to see him again. He’s never going to come
through that door again and say, “Hello, Mum,” and sit
down at that table and eat the food I’ve cooked for him. He’s
never going to ask to scrape out the bowl when I’ve made a
cake, or take the last roast potato, or bring in the coal or—’
‘Cissie! You’ve got to stop this or you’ll make yourself ill.’
Polly cut in across the rising voice and put her hands on her
sister’s shoulders. ‘Look, I know what you’re going through
- I’ve already lost my man, remember? And I’ve had to send
my little girl away to strangers, not knowing when I’ll be
able to have her with me again. I’m upset about Terry too we
all are. But we’ve got to carry on. Going over it all, over
and over again, won’t do any of us any good. It won’t bring
him back. What we’ve got to think about now is the living.
The rest of us here - the things we can do to help. And Jean
and her baby,’ she added in a low voice.
Cissie stared at her and then seemed to sag. She turned
away and sank into a chair.
‘I know, Poll. I know all that, but it just comes over me.
I’ve got to cry for him. I’ve got a right to cry for him - he
was my boy. I never expected him to die before me. I
thought he’d still be alive when I went myself. I thought
he’d always be here - a part of my life, a part of me. It’s not what you have children for,’ she said, looking up at her
sister. ‘Seeing them go off to war, knowing they’ve died,
hundreds of miles away, not even able to be with them at the
end. It’s not what you ever think of. Not when they never
meant it themselves. It’s different if they went into the
Forces beforehand, but when they’ve been conscripted…’
‘I know,’ Polly said. ‘I know you’ve got to grieve for him,
Cis. You always will — that’s never going to stop. It’s the
worst thing in the world, losing a child, but you can’t let it get on top of you.’
‘But I feel I want to. Just for a little while, Poll. I feel I
want to let go and let it all wash over me.’ Cissie put her
head into her hands and rocked to and fro. ‘I just want to
cry and cry and cry, and there doesn’t seem to be time. There’s always so much to do, so much to worry about, and I can’t even have time to grieve properly over my own boy.
It doesn’t seem fair.’
‘Well, I think we’ve got to stop thinking about what’s
fair,’ Polly said ruefully. ‘Nothing’s fair, these days. In fact, I wonder whether it ever was. There’s always been unfair
things happening, Cis.’
On the last day of May, there was another raid on
Portsmouth. Two houses in Tipnor were completely
destroyed and a number of others badly damaged. Once
again the fire engines were out and the bomb disposal squad called in, but the residents had reached safety in their shelters and nobody was hurt. Instead, the WVS found
themselves back at their old task of handing out food and
hot drinks to people who were homeless, giving them
clothes from the Lady Mayoress’s Clothing Store, and
searching for places for them to live.
The newspapers were full of the scandal of the Jewish
internees who had fled from Hitler’s regime and been taken
to Australia almost a year earlier. Polly read it and thought
of her words to Cissie, that nothing seemed to be fair. But it
doesn’t have to be this unfair, she thought angrily. People
don’t have to be this cruel to each other.
‘Those poor souls!’ she said indignantly. ‘Kept down
below decks like slaves in a slave ship, and when they got to
Australia all their luggage was taken away from them and
they were treated like criminals. And these are the people
we’re supposed to be fighting for! I don’t understand it, I
really don’t.’
‘What it boils down to,’ Dick said, ‘is that there’s good
and bad in most countries. And I don’t know what it is, but nobody seems to like refugees. It doesn’t matter how bad
they’ve been treated in their own countries, nor how much
we say they ought to be helped, nobody seems to want them.
It’s not even as if Australia was crowded with people, like
we are here - there’s space enough for all.’
‘I don’t think it was the Australians that did this, though.
It’s the British soldiers who were in charge of them who’ve
been court-martialled.’ Polly sighed and folded the newspaper.
‘I’ve had enough of reading this. It’s all misery,
wherever you look. Who wants to go to the pictures?’
The cinema was only partially an escape, though, for
between the two films — the ‘big’ picture that everyone went
to see and the ‘little’ picture that you saw whether you
wanted to or not - they sandwiched the Pathe Pictorial
News. This showed a resume of the week’s events with,
inevitably, most of it about the war. The news you had
heard on the wireless over the past few days came
dramatically to life as you watched shots of soldiers
marching in the desert, ships at sea and bomb damage.
Sometimes you saw the bombs actually falling and exploding,
and people clambering over the wreckage afterwards as
they searched for their family, friends and belongings. The
scenes were all too familiar to Portsmouth folk.
All the same, it was good to go and be entertained for a
few hours and the whole family went to see George Formby
when he came to the Odeon to put on a fund-raising show
for air-raid victims one afternoon. He sprang on to the stage
with his ukelele, singing his cheeky songs ‘When I’m
Cleaning Windows’ and ‘Sitting in the Maginot Line’, and
had them all laughing within seconds. They were still
laughing as they came out into the sunlight after the show
had ended, and returned home feeling better than they had
since before Terry’s death. Even Judy had enjoyed it.
Polly had received another letter from Joe Turner. He
was still working in the offices at Whitehall, although he was
vague about what he was actually doing. She thought of his rueful words - ‘polishing up the knocker on the big front
door’ — and wondered what a man with only one foot could
do, apart from such menial tasks. He had been down to
Devon again to see his boys and said they were well and
happy, spending all their spare time either helping around
the farm or out on the moors playing cowboys and Indians. They’ll forget they were ever Cockneys, he wrote wryly.
Polly thought about Joe as she went about her tasks. She
could hardly believe that another man could be important to
her after Johnny’s death, and she reminded herself that he
had offered her nothing but friendship - a shoulder to cry
on, a helping hand when she’d needed it. Yet how many
friends, especially ones so newly made, would have done all
that Joe Turner had done? He’d come all the way from
London to see her, and he’d been a real help in their time of
trouble, making cups of tea, doing the veg and going out to
fetch Judy home. And when he’d held out his arms to her
and hugged her against him, she’d felt a deep, warm
closeness between them that she hadn’t known since Johnny
had gone away. For a moment, it had been like coming
home.
But since then, he seemed to have cooled off. His letter
was no more than a letter that any casual friend or
acquaintance might have written - pleasant, friendly, chatty.
No more than that. No mention of another visit.
Perhaps seeing me at home made some sort of difference,
she thought. Perhaps I was different from what he’d
thought. Perhaps since he’s been down to Devon again and
seen that Mrs Ellacombe who’s looking after his boys, he’s
got more interested in her.
It didn’t matter. He was a man she’d met briefly a couple
of times, had a pleasant day with and who’d been helpful to
her family when they were in trouble. That was all there was
to it. Probably he wouldn’t bother to write again. She
decided to put him out of her mind.
Judy had had a letter too. Hers was from Ben, still at school in Winchester. He wrote of school activities lessons,
exams, sports — with impatience. Only a few more
weeks to go, he wrote, and I can leave for ever. He had already applied to join the RAF and expected to be called up almost
as soon as the school holidays began. Judy wondered what
the Hazelwoods would say about that. She was sure that Ben
hadn’t mentioned his plans to his parents.
It was strange, she thought, that a boy of eighteen could
go to fight in a war without asking his parents’ permission,
whereas he couldn’t get married, vote or even stay out late
without it until he was twenty-one.
Life was still a lonely, silent affair for Judy. She spent her
days working in the Clothing Store, keeping a check on
what garments they had. It was even more important now,
for on the first day of June, clothing rationing was
announced and people weren’t so ready to give away
unwanted items. Instead, they would have to take old winter
coats to bits to make new ones for children, cut down frocks
that had got too tight round the bodice to make skirts, and
unpick jumpers that had gone at the elbows to make
pullovers or gloves. There were complaints, of course — Ethel Glaister was especially bitter about the new rules against pleats and frills — but it was just one more thing to
put up with. In fact, Alice remarked, it probably didn’t hit
the people of April Grove as hard as the smarter ones who
lived in better streets and had bigger houses. They weren’t
used to make do and mend, while for April Grove folk it
had always been a way of life.
However, apart from the clothes rationing and a series of
raids, including one night when it was announced that there
had been more alarms than on any other since the beginning
of the war, June did bring a few items of good news. The
first was when the news ran round the Clothing Store that
the Lord Mayor had been knighted in the King’s Birthday
Honours list.
‘You mean he’ll be a Sir?’ Judy asked when this had been
explained to her by Laura, who was also working in the
store. ‘Instead of Lord Mayor?’
‘No, he’ll still be Lord Mayor, but he’ll be “Sir” as well.
And the Lady Mayoress will be “Lady”, even after she stops being Lady Mayoress. Isn’t it smashing!’ Laura finished
sorting a pile of children’s jumpers and set them aside. ‘It
just shows that the King thinks a lot of him. It’s for services to Civil Defence.’
‘I’ve never known a knight before.’ Judy’s ideas of
knights of the realm were mostly gained from a hotchpotch
of children’s stories, and legends from St George to King
Arthur. She tried to imagine the Lord Mayor in armour and
failed. ‘Will he have to wear special clothes and go to
Buckingham Palace and all that?’
‘Well, to be knighted, I suppose he will.’ Laura didn’t
know much about it herself. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be all that
different the rest of the time.’
The Evening News was full of the new appointment and
recounted messages of congratulation from all over England