Keep the Home Fires Burning
‘If you ask me, not being able to breathe is a pretty big thing,’ Tony said. ‘I can’t breathe either, and I’ll tell you summat else as well: they won’t have to bother with sending no gas over here; the stink of rubber will do the job for them.’
Sarah felt sorry for the children. The gas masks were hideous, very smelly and uncomfortable to wear, and breathing once they were on was not easy. However, she felt she had to show the lead in this and so she said, ‘All right, so they’re not nice, but if we have to wear them then we have to, and that’s all there is to it. I’m sure that it’s just a case of getting used to it.’
‘Huh!’ said Tony contemptuously, but Marion threw Sarah a look of gratitude.
That night the talk around the tea table was all about the news that day. ‘The bosses heard it announced and came and told us lot on the shop floor,’ Bill said. ‘We have no option now, so I told the gaffer I’m off to enlist on Monday morning. He was prepared for it because I told him a while ago what I intended, once war was official, like.’
Marion swallowed the lump that seemed lodged in her throat and said, ‘Did he mind?’
‘Ain’t no good minding things like this in a war situation,’ Bill said. ‘Anyroad, he didn’t. He actually said if he had been a younger man he would have done the same thing and I weren’t the only one to go, by any means.’
‘He ain’t either, Mom,’ Richard said. ‘Remember them Jewish apprentices I told you about? Well, they’re all enlisting too. One of them said that he’s avenging the death of his parents because he thinks they must be dead or they would have got word to him by now. I can quite see how he feels. There were others as well. There was a right buzz in the canteen over dinner, wasn’t there, Dad?’
‘There was, son. And if all those who said they were enlisting actually do it, the foundry will be very short-handed. Although women can take on a lot of the men’s work, like they’re talking about, some of the foundry tasks will probably be too heavy for most of them.’
‘So what will they do about that?’
Bill shrugged. ‘Search me,’ he said. ‘But every man jack of us that can get out there and fight should, because we have to stop the Nazis while there’s still time.’
Bill’s words brought a chill to all of them.
‘I can’t help wishing you didn’t feel this way, just as I wish that we were not at war with anyone,’ Marion said, breaking the silence, ‘but I know what you have to do and though I can’t say truthfully that you go with my blessing, I’ll support you the best way I can.’
‘You can’t say fairer than that,’ Bill replied, and as he put his hand over hers on the table, Marion saw his eyes were very bright.
No one dawdled at Mass that Sunday for the Prime Minister was going to speak to the nation on the wireless just after eleven o’clock. Polly and Pat, and other neighbours without their own wireless sets, were crowded into the Whittakers’ and at a quarter past eleven they learned ‘this country is at war with Germany’. As the broadcast came to an end, some of the listeners had tears trickling down their cheeks, yet no one was surprised by the news.
Just then, a dreadful, ear-splitting sound rent the air. They all knew what it was – the siren signalling an attack ? and they all looked at each other fearfully, not sure what to do. It proved to be a false alarm but it galvanised Marion into action. For days, both in the newspaper and on the wireless, the Government had been advising householders to get together a shelter bag and put into it anything of value, such as ration books, identity cards, saving and bank books, insurance policies, treasured photographs, and maybe a pack of cards or dominoes, or favourite books for the children.
Marion hadn’t done it, as if not doing it was going to change what had been staring her in the face for weeks. Nor had she cleared out the cellar, though now that it had been reinforced it was where they might be spending a lot of their time. Their cellar was bigger than most, but this just meant that there was more room to house junk. As the all clear sounded, Marion said to Polly, ‘I went down yesterday and I had quite forgotten the rubbish we put in there, like the rickety wooden chairs, and that battered sagging sofa that we bought when we were first married.’
‘You might be glad of places to sit when the raids come.’
‘I know,’ Marion said. ‘I shan’t throw anything away. But I will ask Bill to look at the chairs. He’ll soon make them a bit sturdier; he’s very handy that way.’
‘Oh, I wish Pat was,’ Polly said. ‘He finds it hard to knock a nail in.’
Marion said nothing, because that was best whenever Pat’s name came up. Instead she said, ‘I wonder what Mammy will say about the recent turn of events.’
‘Well, you’ll know soon enough, won’t you?’ Polly said. ‘I suppose they’re coming to tea as usual?’
Marion nodded.
‘You might not be so keen on having them over every week once Bill joins the army,’ Polly went on. ‘I doubt a soldier will get as much money as Bill picks up now, and you may find it a bit of a struggle. If you’re strapped at all we can help you out. God knows, you’ve helped us out enough in the past.’
‘Let’s just see how we go for now,’ Marion said. ‘We’ll likely know more when the men come back from the recruiting office tomorrow.’
FOUR
It was a fair step to Thorpe Street Barracks, the other side of town, near the Horse Fair in Edgbaston, not a place either Pat or Bill had been to before. They kept up a steady pace, though as they passed the White Lion pub Pat looked at it longingly because the day was warm one.
‘I could murder a cold pint just now.’
‘It would be welcome right enough,’ Bill said, ‘but the pubs won’t be open yet awhile. Anyroad, it wouldn’t look well, enlisting in the army stinking of beer.’
‘Yeah, maybe not,’ Pat conceded. ‘And we’re nearly there, I’d say. This bloke down our yard, who went last week, said the barracks is about halfway down the road.’
As they passed rows of back-to-back houses Bill asked Pat how Polly had taken the news that he was going to enlist. ‘Well, she weren’t over the moon or owt,’ Pat said. ‘She come round, like, in the end, ‘cos it isn’t as if I’ve got a job to leave, like you have. Anyroad, as I said to Poll, if we can kick them Jerries into shape soon, like, then our Chris might not be drawn into it. Tell you the truth, Bill, I’d give my right arm for my lads to stay out of this little lot. I mean, they haven’t really had any sort of life yet, have they?’
‘No, you’re right, of course,’ Bill agreed.
‘How did Marion cope with it?’
‘She kicked up a bit of a stink,’ Bill said. ‘Mind you, she doesn’t hold a candle to her mother. Bloody old vixen, she is.’
‘Did you tell Clara that we were enlisting together?’
‘Yeah, I did.’
‘Bet that didn’t go down too well. That woman hates my guts. I’ve never managed to provide for Polly the way the old woman thought I should.’
‘Yeah, but that wasn’t your fault,’ Bill said. ‘Anyroad, I think she has a short memory. She came from very humble beginnings herself, Marion told me. For the first few years of her life she was brought up in a damp, smelly, rat-infested cellar because her parents couldn’t afford anything better. Eddie wasn’t at the rolling mills then; he was a porter down at New Street railway station and he had to go each day to see if he’d be set on. Marion said that sometimes he had no work and so no money for days. She was often hungry and barefoot. D’you know, she began life as scullery maid in a large country house in Edgbaston when she was just ten years old?’
‘Did she?’ Pat said. ‘Polly never told me that. Course, being younger, she’d hardly be aware of it. Anyroad, I thought there were laws about that kind of thing?’
Bill nodded. ‘Marion should by rights have been at school until she was twelve, but apparently Clara said she could read, write and reckon up, and that was all the learning she would need, and a sight more than Clara herself had ever had, and it was time that she was working. She was so small when she began work she couldn’t reach the sinks and had to stand on a board. It must have been hard for her for she said some of the pots were nearly as big as she was and there were a great many of them and the hours were long. And yet she claims she was happy because when she began there it was the first time she could ever remember being warm and properly dressed, even in the winter. She lived in the attic of the big house, which she shared with the kitchen maid and two housemaids. For the first time in her life she had a comfortable bed of her own and a cupboard beside it to put her clothes in. She said it was like luxury.
‘She also had plenty to eat, because the master and mistress were generous, and Cook was a kindly soul who always maintained that the staff worked harder when their stomachs were full.’
‘Polly told me that,’ Pat said. ‘She said they always looked forward to her coming home on a day off because the cook would pack up a big basket for them all. Apart from that, their lives were hard enough and she said nearly all her brothers and sisters died. Eddie must have been glad to get that job at the rolling mills.’
‘Well, it meant at least they could move into that back-to-back in Yates Street,’ Bill said. ‘Marion thought that things might get better for them all at last.’
‘Aye, and then old Clara was knocked for six when Michael died on one of those bleeding coffin ships,’ Pat said. ‘Polly remembers the unhappiness in the house then, although she was only young herself.’
‘Yeah, but Clara never let herself get over it,’ Bill said. ‘I’m not saying that you wouldn’t be upset – Christ, it would tear the heart out of me to lose just one of my kids – but in the end you have to face it and go on, and she’s never done that. All I’m saying is, Eddie couldn’t get a regular job for years and neither could his sons, which is why they made for the States in the first place, so I can’t understand why Clara should take against you for finding things to be the same. That’s just life, that is.’
‘Huh, I don’t worry myself about anything that old harridan says to me. It’s like water off a duck’s back.’
‘Good job,’ Bill said. ‘Anyroad, here we are.’
The barracks were large and imposing, and decorated with posters urging men to enlist.
‘Come on, let’s get it over with,’ Pat said, and they went in through the wide, square entrance with turrets on either side.
The entrance hall was packed, but those in charge seemed to have it all in hand and the recruits were dealt with speedily. When all the formalities had been done and the forms filled in, they signed their names and were officially enlisted in the army, subject to their medicals.
When Bill learned that in the army he would be earning fourteen shillings a week of which one shilling and eleven pence would be deducted for his keep he was not unduly alarmed. In wartime he assumed he would have little to spend his money on, but he was interested in how much his family would be allocated while he was away fighting for King and Country.
‘That will depend on how many children you have,’ the official told him.
‘I have five,’ Bill said.
‘Are any of those children working?’
‘The eldest one.’
‘There will be no allowance for that one then,’ the official said. ‘For the others a penny for each of them will be taken from your wages every week.’
‘A penny?’
‘Yes, and the Government will add tuppence for each child in addition to that, which brings it to another shilling a week.’
It was a pittance. A shilling a week to feed and clothe four growing children. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach Bill asked, ‘And my wife, – what allowance has she?’
‘She has what is called a Separation Allowance, which amounts to one shilling and one penny a day, and there will also be another sixpence taken from your wages for her.’
Bill did the calculations. Marion would have the princely sum of nine shillings and a penny for all of them to live on.
‘Is that all?’ Bill cried. ‘She won’t be able to live on that. Almighty Christ, the rent alone is twelve shillings a week.’
‘Everyone has the same, Mr Whittaker,’ the official said coldly. ‘We cannot make a special case for your wife.’
‘No, but–’
‘Mr Whittaker, those are the rates and that is that,’ the official told him firmly. ‘I have a lot of people to see besides yourself and however long you argue, your family’s entitlement will remain the same.’
Bill had no alternative but to leave. Outside in the corridor he found Pat waiting for him.
‘God,’ Pat said ironically, ‘at least they give the wife and kids plenty to live on. Keep them in the lap of luxury, that.’
Bill shook his head. ‘I don’t know how I am going to face Marion and tell her this. She’ll never manage on it. Richard can’t give her any more than he does because his wage as a junior apprentice is only nine and eleven pence. Sarah is fourteen next month and will be leaving school then, but even if she is able to get a job it won’t pay very well. Christ, Pat, I’ve been bringing home three pounds ten shillings every week, more with overtime, which I did most weeks.’
His heart sank as he remembered how Marion would often say with pride that she had never visited a pawn shop, never had reason to, not like her sister, Polly, who never seemed to be out of the place. As he and Pat turned for home again he gave a heavy sigh.
‘That’s the sigh of a weary man,’ Pat smiled.
‘A guilty one, perhaps,’ Bill said. ‘How do they expect a woman to buy food, coal and pay the rent on the pittance they allow them? And that’s taking no account of clothes and boots growing children need.’
‘I know,’ Pat said. ‘It’s a bugger, all right. Polly won’t be so bad, see, because the boys get good enough money at Ansell’s. And even in a war, people will still want beer, won’t they? More rather than less, I would have said, and Mary Ellen has been working in Woolworths for over a year now and she tips up her share too.’
Bill saw that, for the first time, the Reillys would be better off than the Whittakers. Their rent, too, was less than half what the Whittakers paid. ‘And don’t forget the Christmas Tree Fund will help you with clothes and boots for the kids,’ Pat went on.
Bill shook his head dumbly. Marion had often said she would die of shame if she couldn’t provide for their own children and had to rely on handouts from the Evening Mail Christmas Tree Fund.
Pat saw the look on Bill’s face. ‘And don’t look like that,’ he snapped. ‘Better take them and be grateful than let the kids suffer. Pride and fine principals are all very well when you have plenty of money coming in.’
Bill felt ashamed, for he knew that Pat was only trying to be helpful. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s just that neither Marion nor me envisaged going cap in hand to anyone.’
‘Well, we ain’t never been at war before, have we, and so we have to do the best we can.’
‘I know,’ said Bill, ‘but I don’t think there are words written that will ease any of this for Marion.’
Pat watched his brother-in-law trudge away from him, his head lowered and his shoulders hunched, and he didn’t envy him a bit. He and Polly had had a lot of knocks in their journey through life and he knew that she would view this as yet another challenge to overcome. After all, he reasoned, they wouldn’t be the only wives and mothers in the same situation.
Marion was in the scullery where she was rinsing out the boiler that she had used for the Monday wash. She looked up when she heard Bill and was slightly alarmed by the wretched look on his face. For a split second she thought that the army had refused him. That news would delight her, but she knew that it would devastate him and so she said, ‘Did everything go all right?’
Bill nodded. ‘I am to report on Wednesday for my medical and, provided I pass that, I will be in.’
Marion knew he would pass. Bill had always been a fit man.
‘Where are the children?’ he asked. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Sarah and Siobhan have taken the lot of them down the park,’ Marion said. ‘Talk away if you must, but I will have to get on …’
‘Marion, please.’ Bill placed his hands over Marion’s, which were reddened and still damp. ‘I need us both to sit down and talk.’
She looked into his troubled eyes and realised that she didn’t want to hear what he had to say. But that wouldn’t help, she knew, and so she followed him into the living room, where they sat on the two easy chairs in front of the range.
Knowing that there was no way of softening the blow, Bill said immediately, ‘When I decided to enlist, I knew that a soldier’s wages wouldn’t be near as much as I was earning, but I didn’t believe it would be so little.’
‘How little?’ Marion said in a steely voice, and as Bill told her he saw her large eyes widen in horrified surprise.
She wondered why she wasn’t shouting and screaming and throwing things about the room because it was what she really wanted to do. She also wanted to lash out at the husband she thought she knew and say it wasn’t to be borne that he could leave them almost destitute. But she did none of these things, because overriding her white-hot anger was the panicky thought that once he left there was a real risk of the family starving, or, at the very least, being put out of their house if she couldn’t raise the rent money.
‘So, I will have the princely sum of nine shillings and a penny to live on while you are away hunting down Germans?’ she spat.
‘I didn’t know,’ Bill said. ‘I had no idea that the wages or Separation Allowance would be so low. I would have thought that they would value our contribution to the army higher than that.’
‘Well, they don’t,’ Marion hissed. ‘And it might have been better for us all if you had made sure of the facts before you signed the forms.’
‘I know that,’ Bill said miserably. ‘I will send you what I can.’
‘Out of fourteen shillings a week?’ Marion said disparagingly. ‘With one shilling and eleven pence already taken out of your wages, and the money for the children and me as well? We might get short shrift if we relied on money from you to put food on the table.’
‘I know,’ Bill said. ‘And I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, that’s all right then, if you’re sorry,’ Marion said bitterly. ‘That will make a lot of bloody difference.’
The very fact that she had used an expletive at all, showed Bill the level of her distress. He tried to put his arms around her but she fought him off, for she heard the children coming in.
The following day Bill walked to the foundry with Richard to tell his gaffer what had transpired and to collect his wages, for they operated a week-inhand system, and also draw out any holiday money due to him. But he also wanted to snatch a private word with his son.
‘You’ll be the man of the house when I’m gone.’
‘I know, Dad,’ Richard said. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘It’s up to you to look after your mother,’ Bill went on. ‘Sarah will help you. She’s a good girl that way. And for God’s sake keep a weather eye on young Tony. There’s no real harm in him, but I know he’d go to hell and back to get into Jack’s good books.’
Richard knew that only too well. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said. ‘But I’m at work all day.’
‘I know. And if he was at school all day I wouldn’t worry so much, but your mother says most of the teachers have gone with the evacuated children, so there will be no school until they have sorted something else for those left behind. And,’ Bill added with a wry smile, ‘idleness and therefore boredom can lead to all sorts of mischief.’
Richard nodded. ‘I know. And like I told you before, I’ll do my level best to help out.’
Bill felt much relieved because he knew that Richard could be trusted. They parted at the gates and Bill went to the wages office to get what was due to him, which amounted to nearly ten pounds. Which he gave straight to Marion.
‘Go easy with this,’ he warned her. ‘I don’t know how long it will take them to sort out your allowance. Once I’ve had the medical, providing that is all clear and everything, I’m not to report until Friday, and they might not put things in motion until it is sort of official.’
‘And what if they do take weeks to sort it out?’
‘They’d hardly do that,’ Bill said. ‘They’ll know you’ve all got to live. God knows, they are giving you little enough as it is.’
Marion gave a sigh. ‘Remember, I have tasted extreme poverty before and, I’d rather cut off my right arm than let my children suffer as I did throughout my childhood.’
Bill didn’t want that either, but he was utterly helpless to ease the predicament that he had put them in by enlisting. Pat didn’t seem to feel the gut-wrenching guilt Bill did, and Bill wished he could view life the same way, but he was made in a different mould entirely from Pat.
As Marion expected, Bill was passed as A1, fit to serve overseas. He was issued with a uniform and a kitbag, and had to report to Thorpe Street Barracks at seven o’clock on Friday morning.
She was surprised when he said that Pat had failed the medical. ‘Why?’ Marion said. ‘He looks all right to me.’
Bill shrugged. ‘I didn’t get to see him after,’ he said. ‘Folk that did said he was gutted.’
‘I wish it was you,’ Marion said.
‘God, don’t say that,’ Bill cried. ‘The man could have anything wrong with him.’
‘Huh, not Pat Reilly. The man is too pickled from alcohol for germs to live long on him. And now he’s somehow managed to wriggle out of the army. Well, I’m away to our Polly’s to find what that lying hypochondriac told them on the Medical Board so that they sent him home.’
The whole family got up to see Bill off that Friday. When he descended the stairs, dressed in his uniform, his wife and children assembled below thought they had never seen him look so smart. But, as Magda said to Missie later, ‘It didn’t look like our dad, though, did it?’
‘No, dain’t smell like him, either.’
‘Yeah, it was like kissing a stranger,’ Magda said.
For all that, they both cried bitterly when they did kiss Bill goodbye, though he kept assuring them that he’d be home again in a few weeks’ time.
Eventually they were calmer and when Magda said, ‘Are you calling for Uncle Pat?’ they were all surprised when he told them that their uncle had failed the medical.
‘Why?’ Tony asked. ‘Jack never said owt.’
‘Maybe he didn’t want to say,’ Bill said. ‘Maybe he didn’t know himself.’
‘But why did he fail, anyroad?’ Magda asked.
‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies,’ Marion said.
Magda thought that just about headed a long list of annoying things mothers said. How were you to get to know anything if you didn’t ask questions? She didn’t bother asking again, though, because her mother could get right angry sometimes when she did that sort of thing. And that day she had two spots of colour on her cheeks, and her eyes looked very bright, which were two bad signs.
It was still very early, so when they had had their breakfast of bread and dripping and had a cat lick of a wash, they went out into the yard.
‘I can’t understand why our mom won’t say what’s wrong with Uncle Pat,’ Magda said.
‘Cos she’s a grown-up, that’s why,’ Tony said darkly. ‘And that’s what they do.’
Magda knew that, but Sarah was a different kettle of fish. She was almost fourteen and not yet a real adult, so she collared her in the bedroom later and said, ‘Why didn’t Uncle Pat get into the army, Sarah?’
‘Because he has flat feet.’
Missie and Tony were still in the yard, and when Magda went out and told them what Sarah had said they both looked at her in astonishment.
‘Don’t be daft!’ Tony said,
‘I’m not,’ Magda said indignantly. ‘That’s what Sarah said.’
‘It couldn’t be just that, though.’
Magda shrugged. ‘Well, that’s all she said.’ Then suddenly she sat down on the back step, where she unlaced her shoes and peeled off her socks.