‘Aye,’ said Liz, exaggerating her accent ‘Why no’?’
‘Where d’ye live, doll?’ he asked.
Sadie chuckled.
‘Helensburgh,’ said Liz, naming the little resort on the Firth of Clyde, thirty miles away down the river.
Her swain let go of her abruptly.
‘Helensburgh! It’s no’ a lumber you need, hen.’ Eddie paused for effect before delivering the punch-line. ‘It’s a pen-pal.’
Mrs Crawford gave a great hoot of laughter. The upright chair in which she sat creaked in protest as she leaned back.
‘Oh dear,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘That pair should be on the stage, Sadie. I haven’t laughed so much in ages!’
‘Will you have another wee cup of tea, Annie?’ Sadie was beaming, basking in the praise of her beloved children.
Liz and Eddie exchanged a private smile. Then Eddie, one ear cocked to the wireless, grabbed his sister’s hand again.
‘It’s the tango. Come on, Liz!’
They danced cheek to cheek, exaggerating the movements and turns. Eddie, playing the Latin lover to perfection, swung Liz back over his arm at the appropriate moments. Brother and sister gave each other smouldering glances all the while, until they couldn’t keep it up any longer and could hardly dance for laughing.
The next day it was announced on the wireless that the Prime Minister had flown to Germany for crisis talks with Herr Hitler about the Czechoslovakian situation.
Neville Chamberlain made three separate visits to Germany during the last fortnight of September 1938, during which period it felt like the whole country was holding its breath. At the same time, feverish activity was going on. Defensive trenches were dug in Britain’s towns and cities, plans for evacuating children from the industrial areas were scrutinized and the promised gas masks finally appeared.
Some folk took one look and said they couldn’t. They would feel as if they were choking and the smell of the rubber would make them feel sick.
Liz could see what they meant. The masks had a sinister appearance which gave everyone the heebie-jeebies. Their very existence was depressing, making the threat which had hung over the country all summer that much more real. How awful that one civilized European country was actually contemplating releasing such a terrible weapon upon another.
Children were to have their own versions of the respirators, known as Mickey Mouse masks. It was recommended that mothers play a short game with their children each day to get them used to putting on the claustrophobic devices. There was some concern over how babies were to be protected, and there were no respirators for cats or dogs.
The atmosphere was curious: a mixture of ill-concealed nervousness, gallows humour and a feeling of something like relief that the threatened showdown with Germany might be coming at last.
Clydebank appreciated the seriousness of the situation - if it hadn’t done so before - when it was deemed impossible for the King to come north to launch the new liner waiting to go into the river at John Brown’s. Fortunately it was considered that his wife might be spared, although the launch was a low-key affair. The Queen gave the new ship her own - and Liz’s - name.
‘They’ll not be able to bomb us,’ some folk said, trying to reassure themselves and others. ‘We’re too far away. Their planes would never be able to carry enough fuel. And how would they find the Clyde among all the other rivers and lochs on the west coast? I feel sorry for the Londoners, though. Germany’s only a hop, skip and a jump away from them. And London’s that big ye cannae miss it.’
Hundreds of thousands of Britons decided in the last fortnight of September 1938 that it was high time they made their wills. Tam Simpson was one of them. His wife went her dinger about that.
‘A will! He thinks he should write his will!’
‘You don’t think it’s a good idea, Mrs Simpson?’ asked Helen.
‘He’s got nothing to leave, pet. Apart from a few empty whisky bottles, that is.’ Nan curled her lip. ‘That’s what I said to him. And do you know what he said to me? Do you know what Thomas Simpson had the black effrontery to say to me?’
Helen shook her head. The conversation was ostensibly between her and Tam’s aggrieved wife, but everybody was listening in. Behind Nan’s head, Liz and Janet were making apologetic faces at Helen, thankful that the older woman had caught her and not them. The tirade had been going on for some time.
‘What did he say, Mrs Simpson?’ asked Helen politely.
‘He said he wants to leave me and the weans comfortable if he gets bombed. So, says I to him, we’ve never been comfortable afore. Why should it bother you now? Especially if you’re deid? If you get bombed, says I, we’ll probably a’ get bombed tae. None o’ us’ll be very bloody comfortable then. Sure we’ll no’, hen?’
She paused for breath, looking to Helen for confirmation.
‘Probably not,’ she obliged.
Mrs Simpson drew herself up, the picture of embattled womanhood. ‘My man seems to think Adolf Hitler himself is making a wee special bomb with Tam Simpson written on it - one that’ll get him and leave the rest of us alone.’ She gave a magnificent sniff. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
Despite Tam Simpson’s worries, Adolf Hitler was rather tied up with his own concerns. He was determined to have the Sudetenland. Only Britain, France and Russia, who’d all promised to help Czechoslovakia in the event of a German attack, stood in his way. German public opinion didn’t seem to.
At a huge rally in Nuremberg at the beginning of September he had spoken of atrocities perpetrated against the German-speaking inhabitants of Sudetenland by the Czechs.
Most honest people weren’t sure whether to believe those stories or not, but Neville Chamberlain and his civil servants were getting very fed up with the long-drawn-out negotiations and the stubbornness of the people they referred to as
those Czechos
.
After his second meeting with Hitler, at which he agreed to most of the German leader’s demands, the Prime Minister spoke to the nation via the wireless:
‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.’
Listening to that, Eddie grew pale. When the broadcast was over, he made a grim prediction.
‘It looks as if we’re about to sell Czechoslovakia down the river. Not a very honourable course of action.’
He was right. Two days later, on 29 September, Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini and Daladier, the French prime minister, met at Munich. Czechoslovakia, the country whose fate was being decided, and the only democratic state left in Central Europe, was not represented. The great powers simply made a decision. The Sudetenland would be incorporated into Hitler’s Germany within the space of the next two weeks. The crisis was over.
Neville Chamberlain flew home flourishing a piece of paper which held an agreement that Britain and Germany would never again go to war with each other. It was, he told the people of Britain, nothing less than peace in our time. The tension of the long wet summer exploded into acclaim for Chamberlain. He was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Not everyone rejoiced. Many thought as Eddie did. Winston Churchill was one of them, describing the outcome of the Munich Conference as the blackest page in British history.
But the war everyone had feared so much had been avoided. There was to be peace, and because people longed so much for that, many of them chose to ignore their misgivings. They didn’t ask searching questions and they turned a blind eye to the shaky foundations on which the peace sat, and the cost at which it had been achieved.
It had been too close to call, and the relief was enormous. The last night of the Empire Exhibition in October 1938 gave thousands the chance to celebrate this most narrow of escapes.
Eighteen
Liz felt wonderful. Judging by the noise and laughter, so did everyone around her. Not even the fact that it was raining cats and dogs could dampen the mood. And the wet weather had some advantages. Trying to do the Lambeth Walk whilst simultaneously holding your umbrella over your head meant that it didn’t really matter whether you knew the steps or not.
You couldn’t dance properly in this size of crowd anyway. That didn’t matter either. Noisy and high-spirited, but well behaved at the same time, people were intent on enjoying themselves and marking the end of the exhibition which had meant so much to them.
They were grateful for the pleasure which the event at Bellahouston had brought into their lives: the pavilions, the displays and exhibits, the fountains and cascades, Tait’s Tower and the Highland Village, the music, the knowledge that half the countries of the world had come to this small corner of Glasgow.
It had been a bright splash of colour during one of the wettest summers on record. It had helped them forget the crisis in Europe and the worries and struggles of their own lives.
Liz felt all that. Something else too. She was counting off the weeks. She and Janet had just had it confirmed that they’d be doing their training at the Western. She could hardly wait.
There were two small flies in the ointment. One was Mario Rossi. He was here, but with a girl. He’d given Liz a wee smile accompanied by a curious little downturn of the mouth. Liz had thought it a very continental gesture. Did it signify regret?
If she were being strictly honest, she might have to admit she felt some of that herself. Not to mention a sharp little pang of jealousy when she had seen him with the other girl. And she was just a wee bit put out that despite his bitter observation the night of the Paul Robeson concert, it hadn’t seemed to take him very long to get over his disappointment.
Well, what did she expect? She had turned him down, after all. Twice.
The other minor irritation was the Honourable Miss Maclntyre. Liz couldn’t get on with her at all. Unfortunately, the girl seemed to like her. She had sought her out earlier in the evening to ask which hospital Liz had been allocated to for her VAD training and when she was due to start.
Cordelia had been delighted. She was heading for the same place at the same time. Liz had been sorely tempted to say, ‘Oh, goody,’ or perhaps, ‘Really? How frightfully spiffing!’ She managed to restrain herself.
Never mind. She was going to do her VAD training; she seemed, touch wood, to have more or less solved the Eric Mitchell problem; there wasn’t going to be a war - not this week anyway; and she was with friends. What more could she want? She resolutely ignored the wee voice in her head which whispered,
Mario Rossi.
There was some romance in the air. Helen and Eddie had eyes only for each other, although things were still at an early stage. Liz had a shrewd suspicion they hadn’t even kissed properly yet. She thought that was nice, kind of romantic, like the way they were shyly holding hands tonight.
Adam Buchanan had complained vociferously about them making what he called sheep’s eyes at each other and declared that it was positively revolting. Liz wondered what Cordelia thought when he made comments like that. Eddie himself had laughed. After the disaster of his and Adam’s first meeting, they seemed to be getting on well enough tonight.
Not long after they arrived at Bellahouston in the early evening they had a spirited but amiable discussion about the exhibition and the Empire itself. Adam asserted that the British had done a lot of good in many of their colonies - introducing democracy and the rule of law and encouraging trade and commerce. The Empire Exhibition was surely a manifestation of that. Eddie, of course, disagreed with him.
They were standing around eating ice-cream in one of the refreshment tents, the rain drumming on the canvas above their heads. Eddie licked his cone contemplatively.
‘As a spectacle,’ he agreed with Adam, ‘it’s been magnificent, second to none, but its very existence is an affront to the countries we’ve subjugated and exploited. We should dismantle the British Empire and give the native peoples their countries back. With an apology,’ he added for good measure.