Where the Heart Lies (2 page)

Franny eased her wrist from Julie’s soft grip, tucked her fair hair behind her ears and slowly lowered herself into a nearby kitchen chair. Apart from the distended belly, she was as thin and waif-like as ever. ‘Don’t fuss, Julie, I’m fine,’ she said softly. ‘But I’ll be glad when this baby’s born, and no mistake. It’s getting more difficult to do the easiest things, and I feel as big and clumsy as the barrage balloons I have to make every blooming day.’

‘It won’t be long now,’ said her mother comfortingly, ‘and you’ve got your sister to look after you, so you don’t have to worry.’

‘Yeah, I know, but I wish Bill was ’ere,’ Franny said wistfully as she reached for the cup of cooling tea.

‘Shame ’e didn’t put a wedding ring on your finger before he took liberties and went off to war,’ muttered her father as he slurped his tea from the saucer.

‘Don’t start, Dad.’ Franny’s blue eyes glistened with unshed tears. ‘’E’s promised to marry me the minute he comes home on leave. We neither of us planned this, you know.’

‘You should’ve been more careful, gel,’ he muttered, glaring at her from beneath his greying bushy
eyebrows. ‘The doctor said you wasn’t to have kids on account of the rheumatics you ’ad. Yer ’eart ain’t strong enough.’

‘Well, it’s a bit late now, ain’t it,’ retorted Franny with unusual asperity.

‘It’s all right, love,’ soothed her mother. ‘Yer dad’s just worried about you living over in Shoreditch. You should be at ’ome with us where we can keep an eye on you.’

‘I’m better off near Julie and the ’ospital, Mum – and you’ve ’ad enough flak from the neighbours already without setting their tongues wagging again. Bill sends me enough money to pay the rent and top up me wages, and if I go into labour, I got Mrs Bessell downstairs who’ll run down to the phone box in the next street to ring Julie.’

‘I wish Bill’s family would put their ’ands in their pockets,’ sighed Flo. ‘You’d think they’d want to ’elp, seeing as this’ll be their first grandchild. I thought they might even offer to have you up there in Yorkshire out of ’arm’s way.’

‘They don’t want to know, Mum,’ sighed Franny, finishing the tea with a grimace. ‘I’ve written to them twice and had no answer, but Bill says they’ll come round to the idea once ’e’s ’ome on leave and we’re properly married.’

‘Funny lot, them northerners,’ rumbled Bert. ‘You’re better off without them, gel.’

Franny and Julie exchanged amused glances. This was one of their dad’s beefs – he’d taken quite a
while to accept Bill, who’d come to London to work on the docks, for he didn’t trust anyone who hadn’t been born and raised in the East End. Yorkshire was a distant world inhabited by an alien race that couldn’t be trusted, and he didn’t like the thought of his youngest getting mixed up with them. Franny’s pregnancy just seemed to confirm his darkest suspicions.

The day was closing in and, as Flo drew the heavy blackout curtains, Julie looked at her watch. ‘We’d better get going soon, or we’ll miss the train.’

Flo was lighting the last of the candles. The gas and electricity were being rationed now and had been off for hours. ‘Can’t you stay just one more night?’

‘Sorry, Mum, but I have to be back at the hostel before ten. I’m on duty at midnight.’

‘I do worry about you out there in the middle of the raids,’ Flo replied tremulously. ‘All them whizz-bangs going off, and you with only a tin hat to protect you.’

‘I prefer that to sitting in the shelter under the tool factory,’ Julie retorted. ‘The thought of all that heavy machinery over me head makes me shiver. I wish you’d go down the tube.’

‘The shelter’s nearer, and it’s all right once you get used to it.’ Flo’s weary face lit up as she smiled. ‘Blimey, gel, I work there every day, it’s getting to be like a second ’ome. Me and Bert have our own
little spot, and there’s always singin’ and such to while away the time. It’s a bit like ’aving a party every night.’

Julie hugged her mother and kissed her cheek. ‘I’ll look after Franny, don’t you worry,’ she murmured.

‘I know you will,’ said Flo, her work-worn hand gently patting her daughter’s cheek. ‘You’re a good girl, Julie, and we’re ever so proud of you, you know.’

‘I couldn’t have done it without you and Dad,’ said Julie. ‘I know how hard it was without me earning all the while I was training.’ She slipped her hand into the pocket of her woollen skirt, drew out a half crown and pressed it into her mother’s palm. ‘Here’s a bit of something to keep you going till next week,’ she said softly enough so her father wouldn’t hear.

Flo closed Julie’s hand over the coin. ‘We don’t need it, love. Not now I’m working at the tool factory and your dad’s staying with the Water Board. We’ve more than enough for the two of us to live on, and you need to be saving up for your wedding.’

Her mother said this to her every time and, as usual, Julie ignored it and put the coin next to the clock. Her parents had sacrificed a lot so she could qualify as a nurse and midwife, and now she was earning two hundred quid a year, a couple of bob a week would not only ease her conscience but bring a few extra treats into her parents’ lives. God knew
they worked hard enough, for her father was sixty-five and had deferred retirement to continue working as a plumber for the Water Board, and her mother not only kept this house going, did her sewing and helped out with the neighbours, but stood for hours in front of a lathe making tools.

While Franny hugged and kissed their mother, Julie planted a kiss on her father’s bald spot. ‘Take care of yourself, Dad,’ she murmured, ‘and look after Mum.’

‘I’ve been looking after yer mum long before you was born, gel,’ he said gruffly. ‘I don’t need you telling me.’ He eyed her sternly. ‘It’s you what needs to take care, gel. Out at all hours, rushing about in the middle of raids. You keep that tin ’at firmly on yer bonce at all times – you hear?’

Julie gave him a swift hug, aware that, despite his gruffness, he loved them all dearly. She pulled on the navy overcoat supplied by the Nursing Association and grabbed her overnight bag and gas mask. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, but I’m on duty for three weeks until I have another sixty hours off.’

Bert rose from his chair, adjusted his braces over his shoulders and fastened his top shirt button before reaching for his jacket. ‘The pub’s on the way to the station, so I’ll walk down with you.’ He rammed his cap over his receding hair. ‘What about you, Flo? Fancy a port and lemon?’

‘I could do with one, and that’s a fact.’ Peeling off her wrap-round pinafore, Flo yanked out the
curler that poked from the front of her scarf and fluffed out her fringe, then pulled on her thin, rather worn overcoat. She blew out the candles and dampened down the fire in the range, then picked up her battered handbag and gas-mask box and linked arms with Franny.

As they headed down the narrow street it was almost like the old days when they’d set off for the pub on a Saturday evening. But the evidence of war was everywhere. Bombed-out houses stood in isolation where once there had been terraces, the pitiful remains of their furnishings open to the elements. Vast craters were overflowing with rubble and had become playgrounds for the children still living in Stepney who used them as a treasure trove to find bits of prized shrapnel. The pavements were almost impassable, and nearly every house had been shored-up, patched with bits of timber, scraps of metal and salvaged bricks. Front doors were scarred, windows boarded, chimneys taken down before they could fall and kill someone. Looming over it all was the tool factory, which filled an entire block and rose three floors above the terraced roofs. Dark and dingy, it had been a fixture in Stepney for as long as anyone could remember.

The journey that should have taken a matter of minutes lasted almost half an hour, for although most of their neighbours had popped in during the last two days, and the night was chilly, they still stood on their doorsteps, arms folded as they
gossiped, wanting to have a bit of a chat with Julie before she left for Shoreditch.

Julie’s qualification as a nurse-midwife had been the talk of the community, stoking both envy and pride in this sprawling, close-knit London borough, and, as the war had progressed and news had filtered back about how hard she worked and how much she cared about her patients, the pride had eclipsed the envy. She was one of their own – a girl who’d made something of herself against all the odds – someone to be looked up to and admired.

The Toolmakers’ Arms stood squarely on the corner opposite the vast factory. Built at the start of the last century, it was two storeys of dirty red brick, with fancy green tiles running in a frieze above the ground floor. The rooms upstairs, which had once accommodated dock workers and sailors on shore leave, were now billets for evacuees. The stained glass windows had been boarded over to protect them from the bomb blasts, and the picture on the weathered old sign that swung above the door was barely discernible beneath the grime. Despite the reasonably early hour, the noise inside was reaching deafening point, and two drunks were already staggering home arm in arm, their singing cheerful but discordant.

Julie hugged her mother and squeezed her father’s arm – he was not a man to want to show any kind of affection out of doors where someone might see him. ‘Have a good night, and we’ll see you soon.’

‘You watch yerself out there,’ her dad muttered.

‘Let me know the minute Franny goes into hospital and I’ll be over,’ said Flo. ‘They’ve got a telephone at the factory. You can ring me there.’

‘I’ll let you know when there’s a bed free,’ said Julie, giving her a kiss. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Take care of ’er, Jules,’ said Flo, her voice unsteady as the ready tears glistened. She hugged her youngest daughter.

‘Blimey, Mum, you don’t ’alf go on. I’ll be fine,’ murmured Franny, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

‘Come on, gel,’ muttered an impatient Bert. ‘Me throat’s as dry as a parrot’s cage, and we’re wasting good drinking time.’

Julie and Franny waved them goodbye as they pushed through the pub’s doorway, and then linked arms and hurried down the road towards the station. As long as the lines weren’t up, and Gerry didn’t decide to bomb them, they should be back in Shoreditch in time to hear the news on the BBC Home Service before Julie had to leave for the nurses’ hostel and prepare to go on duty.

Almost a week had passed since Julie’s visit to Stepney, and the weather had taken a turn for the worse, with sleet and snow to add to the misery of the continued enemy bombing raids.

The telephone call had come to the nurses’ hostel just as Julie was hoping for a quiet night. It had been a long day, with countless air-raid warnings disrupting her mother and baby clinic as well as her
rounds as district nurse. Now it seemed it would be an even longer night, for this particular patient had already suffered two stillbirths, and despite all her advice, and that of the doctor, had refused a hospital delivery.

‘I don’t fancy your chances out there, mate,’ muttered her best friend Lily, who was sitting on her bed filing her nails in the room they shared with four others.

Julie grimaced. ‘Not my idea of fun either,’ she admitted as she fastened the soft white cap over her hair and straightened the folds that fell almost to the shoulders of the pale blue striped dress. ‘Sadie’s mum’s bound to be there, sticking her oar in and filling the room with her fag smoke.’

Lily grinned with understanding. She too was from the East End and had volunteered as a VAD. ‘Need an ’and with this one, Jules?’

Julie put on her navy coat and gloves and tightened the dark scarf round her neck. ‘No thanks, I can handle Val Wickens,’ she muttered. She reached for the black Gladstone nursing bag that was always to hand. ‘It’s Sadie I’m worried about.’

Lily shrugged. ‘She might be only eighteen, but she knows the score. If anything goes wrong this time, it won’t be your fault, Jules.’

Julie didn’t agree but said nothing as she plonked the tin hat over her flowing cap and picked up her gas-mask box. ‘See you later,’ she murmured.

Hurrying out of the room, down the stairs and
along the corridor, she reached Matron’s office and peeked her head round the door. ‘I’m on me way.’

‘Cut along then,’ Matron replied, not lifting her forbidding gaze from the pile of paperwork on her desk. ‘Good luck, Harris,’ she added almost as an afterthought.

Julie ran down the stairs and out into the bitter cold of a winter’s night that promised more snow. Once the precious bag was secure on the luggage rack at the back, Julie set off on her bike down the dark, deserted streets. She had no fear of being attacked in a neighbourhood where coppers patrolled in pairs and only the prostitutes dared walk the streets after dark, for her uniform protected her – brought respect even from the roughest kind.

The sirens began to shriek as she reached the narrow alleyway that led to the crumbling rows of ancient warehouses which had been turned into tenements on the southern edges of Whitechapel. It was one of the poorest districts on her vast round and had suffered badly during the bombing, but the inhabitants clung to it, for it was all they knew, and they would defend their right to stay there to the last breath.

Julie returned hurried greetings as a tide of people rushed past her to get to the nearest shelter. She knew most of them from her rounds as a district nurse and midwife, and from the clinics at the centre. She propped her bicycle against a wall and looked up. The searchlights were already sweeping
across the sky, and above the wail of the sirens and the shouts of the wardens, she thought she could hear the ominous drone of approaching enemy planes.

She quickly took her large bag from the luggage rack, shouldered her gas-mask box and straightened her tin hat before switching on her torch and hurrying through the profound darkness beneath the high tenement walls. It was a hazardous trip, for she had to dodge the piles of rubbish and dubious puddles littering the alleyway. She tried to ignore the advancing roar of the enemy bombers but still flinched as the big guns boomed out and a huge rat shot out of the darkness across her path.

‘Put that bleedin’ light out and get down the bleedin’ shelter!’ The warden stepped out of the shadows right in front of her.