‘Aye,’ Tressa said, but Lizzie noticed that her eyes were nearly glazed over with tiredness and she knew Tressa would get no rest with the children cavorting about the room.
‘Come on,’ Lizzie said. ‘Let’s go out into the garden
and let your mammy sleep now the wee one’s settled.’
Tressa looked at her gratefully. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘I’m certain sure I will be,’ Lizzie reassured her. ‘Doreen will give me a hand. You rest yourself. And I suppose,’ she added to Steve, ‘you’ll be away for a pint or two.’
‘Well, if you insist,’ Steve answered with a grin. ‘Come on, Mike. Ask Arthur if he wants to come.’
Much later, going home in the bus, Steve said, ‘Glad you haven’t gone to seed like your cousin. You’re still shapely and I still fancy you.’
Then why do you need others?
The retort was on the tip of Lizzie’s tongue, but she bit it back. Mike might be faithful, Lizzie thought, but she wouldn’t change places with Tressa for all the tea in China. ‘I’m fair jiggered,’ she said. ‘And Tressa has that day in, day out. And Mike’s little use.’
She had noticed that Mike seemed to think his job as father was done on implantation of the seed and the rearing of the children was totally up to Tressa.
‘Ah,’ Steve said with a smile, as he jiggled Niamh on his knee. ‘Not all women are as fortunate as you.’
‘No,’ Lizzie agreed ruefully and in spite of all Steve’s faults, she truly meant it.
In November, Lizzie was listening to some music on the wireless one evening when it was interrupted by a news broadcast.
’Reports are coming in of great disturbance in Berlin. Shops and houses of the Jewish people are being looted and burned and the people thrown onto the streets.’
The details came later. It was known as the Kristallnacht, or Night of the Broken Glass, and it went on for three days, when it was said that Berlin’s skies were blood red with the number of synagogues set alight. It also caused a domino effect throughout Germany and many people in other towns and cities copied the activities of those in Berlin.
Lizzie crossed to the window one late and dusky afternoon and saw the icy spears of rain hitting the cobblestones, and she shivered for the Jewish families cowering in the cold streets while their homes were being destroyed.
‘And do we just watch?’ Lizzie asked of Steve later.
‘That’s about the strength of it,’ Steve said. ‘Do you want war?’
‘No, of course not.’
No one did, so Lizzie tried to put it out of her mind.
In March 1939, the Czech government, intimidated by the Germans’ aggression on their borders, demoralised by the lack of support from the United Kingdom and frightened by the threat of the blitz they’d seen in Guernica, handed over the independence of their country to Hitler. The Spanish War finished just days later, with Franco, another dictator, the victor.
‘I think,’ said Steve, folding up the paper one day, ‘it’s only a matter of time now.’
Lizzie, helping Tom spoon up the last of his dinner, looked up. ‘War? Surely not? What about “Peace in our time”?’
‘What about it?’
It seemed Steve was right. Everywhere people seemed
to be getting prepared. Even in her mother’s last letter, Catherine had told her that Aunt Margaret was clearing out the two back bedrooms in readiness for Tressa coming home. Was Lizzie making similar arrangements? Catherine asked, especially if Steve joined up as Mike intended to do.
Lizzie was undecided. Around her, people seemed to accept that war was inevitable. Violet’s Colin would be in the front line as it were, and now Carol, though she had a job at Cadbury’s, was hankering to join the Women’s Air Corps, wanting to do her bit. ‘I don’t know,’ Violet said, wiping her seeping eyes with the hem of her apron, ‘You struggle to give birth to them, rear them up to be fine and healthy, and then send them off to war to be shot to pieces or blown apart.’
‘Ah come on, Violet, nothing’s decided yet.’
‘Even you can’t think there’s an alternative now?’ Violet said. ‘All Hitler has got to do now is invade Poland and we’re in.’
And of course he would. Everyone knew he would.
Brick-built shelters, reinforced with sandbags, sprang up everywhere, and deep trenches were dug in parks. People were advised to criss-cross their windows with strong sticky tape to try and reduce injuries by flying glass in the event of a bombing raid, and to register for a gas mask. It was terrifying and yet people’s lives had to go on.
Niamh, who celebrated her fifth birthday in May, was due to start at St Catherine’s after the holidays, and yet before the schools officially opened there was talk of evacuating children from the area.
Violet and Lizzie went to the Bull Ring for blackout material, for the blackout was to come into force from 1
st
September. Lizzie had bounced the big pram down from the attic, for she didn’t use it much now, and they came back with bales of material and other produce packed around the chuckling Tom, to see the headmaster of St Catherine’s at the door.
‘No, Mr Steele,’ Lizzie said once he’d spoken to her. ‘I couldn’t bear the thought of Niamh going to strangers. If I send them anywhere at all it will be to my mother’s in Ireland and I feel they are a little young for that yet—after all, Tom isn’t three for over a month.’
‘You wouldn’t consider going with them?’
Lizzie had considered and rejected it. She thought about the men rushing to join the Territorial Army and registering for the Home Guard, Violet’s two youngsters anxious to play their part and Steve and Mike expressing their determination to enlist in the event of war. She knew if the men were up to fighting to try and stop Hitler, it was up to the women to roll up their sleeves and get on with keeping the country going. They couldn’t all scuttle away like frightened rabbits.
Carol Barlow wasn’t scuttling anywhere either. She’d now firmly set her heart on joining the WAACs. Lizzie knew all about it, for Carol had confided in her, but both knew Violet wouldn’t see it the way Carol did. However, as Lizzie said, there was nothing to be gained by delay and it was always best to take the bull by the horns. Carol agreed: there was no way she was going
to back down and the sooner her mom realised that the better.
‘This ain’t just a war for the men,’ she told her weeping mother after their evening meal that night. ‘Not if we’re going to win it, anyroad.’
‘It ain’t for kids neither, our Carol.’
‘I ain’t a kid,’ Carol protested. ‘Not any more. I feel as strongly about this as our Colin does and you never even tried to stop him.’
‘I did try,’ Violet protested. ‘You might not remember, but I tried. I begged and pleaded. But there weren’t no other option open to him. He didn’t have a good job like you have.’
‘Well, he’d be in it now, anyroad,’ Carol said.
Violet knew Carol was right. The boys of twenty years old had been called up from April and Colin was just two months off his twenty-first birthday.
‘People are saying there should be conscription for women too,’ Carol told her mother.
‘Heaven forbid!’ Violet cried. ‘For pity’s sake, girl.’
‘There won’t be time for any pity in this war,’ Carol said grimly. ‘Look at Guernica. Who pitied them?’
‘I know that,’ Violet said, ‘and I know that might come here too, but I just don’t see how you running off to join the services is going to help.’
‘Neither do I till I get there,’ Carol said. ‘But what if girls like me were given jobs, usually done by men, thereby releasing them men to fly or summat?’
‘Barry!’ Violet cried, exasperated. ‘Haven’t you got anything to say about all this?’
Barry had been calmly reading his paper before the fire, taking no part in the heated discussion around
him, and he folded it and laid it on the chair beside him before addressing his wife. ‘I got summat to say all right, but you won’t like hearing it.’
‘What then?’
‘Just this,’ Barry said. ‘Every one of us in this world has got to do as they see fit, and as kids grow up the decisions they make has to be their own.’
‘So, you think we should just let her go?’
Barry winked across the room at his daughter. ‘Daresay we couldn’t really stop her, old girl’ he said, and crossed the room and put his arm around his distressed wife. ‘What I say is, let her go with our blessing.’
Carol let out the breath she’d been holding, for she knew she’d won. Her father was a quiet man and seldom made a stand, and so when he did it was even more powerful and Violet always listened and rarely went against him. Her mother looked suddenly defeated and Carol felt a stab of sympathy for her as she sort of sagged against Barry and he held her tighter. ‘Do it then,’ she said. ‘You’ve made your mind up already, anyroad.’
Carol resisted the temptation to give a whoop of joy.
Later Carol relayed the conversation to Lizzie, although there was no need because she’d heard the entire altercation through the walls. Nevertheless, she congratulated Carol warmly and her determination to do her bit strengthened Lizzie’s own resolve to stay put, at least for the time being.
That night, the
Evening Mail
carried the story and pictures of seventy Jewish children arriving from Poland,
who would stay with foster parents until they were eighteen. What a desperate thing, Lizzie thought, to send your children to live with strangers in a country where the whole language and culture would be totally alien to them. A parent had to be panic-stricken to agree to such a course of action.
Two days later, on Friday, 1
st
September, Poland was invaded and a sad little group of children left St Catherine’s School with a case, haversack or carrier bag with their clothes in and a gas mask slung around their necks as they boarded the buses to Moor Street Station. Many adults dabbed at their eyes at the sad sight and some mothers cried openly. ‘Poor little devils,’ Violet said. ‘No one has a clue where they are going.’
But Tressa’s children knew where they were going, and later that same day Mike helped her transport the entire family to Donegal, where they would be safe. Lizzie couldn’t blame Tressa, for she had a lot of children to see to if there was bombing of any magnitude, but, despite Steve’s urging, she decided to wait and see for herself and her own.
By the following day, German tanks had flattened the Polish towns of Krakow, Teschen and Katowice, and Warsaw too was suffering heavy bombardment. Chamberlain issued an ultimatum to withdraw immediately from Poland but there was no response from Germany.
‘This is really it, ain’t it?’ Minnie said, meeting Lizzie on her way to put rubbish in the bin.
‘Looks like it,’ Lizzie replied. ‘Steve says he’ll join up.’
‘Aye, mine too,’ Minnie said. ‘I told him he’s likely
be the first casualty. Bloody daft bugger. He wheezes like an old steam train when he walks to the boozer at the end of the street to see how many pints he can down before he falls over.’
‘There won’t be the money for much of that,’ Gloria added, coming out to join them. ‘I don’t think army pay is that good and they have to send most of that to the women, especially if there’s kids, like.’
‘And no chance of nicking it out your purse when your back’s turned either,’ Minnie said.
Lizzie was shocked. Steve would never have taken a penny piece from her. He got good money, though he worked for it and she realised he wouldn’t get anything like the same money in the army. They’d all have to pull their belts in a bit and she wouldn’t be the only one.
‘Blokes is all the same,’ Sadie put in from her doorway. ‘Puffing and blowing and threatening to join up, like they was off to some boy scouts’ jamboree.’
‘Oh, I think they give it a bit more thought than that, Sadie,’ Lizzie said with a wry laugh. ‘They know war isn’t any sort of picnic.’
‘I think half of them won’t do it in the end.’
‘Well, we’ll soon see,’ Lizzie said. ‘The Prime Minister is going to be on the wireless just after eleven o’clock tomorrow. Steve’s coming to the children’s Mass with me at nine so we’ll be back in plenty of time. Anyone coming in to listen?’
‘You bet,’ said Minnie and Ada together.
‘Violet’s coming in too, for all she’s got her own set,’ Lizzie said.
‘Bit daft that, ain’t it?’
‘I don’t know. It’s sort of nice all being together to hear news like that,’ Lizzie mused.
‘I’ll come up after,’ Gloria said. ‘When I get the roast in the oven. What about you, Sadie?’
‘No,’ Sadie answered. ‘I’m going to our mom’s up Latimer Street. She’s dead upset at this talk of another war. She can remember the last one that took my dad. He was killed at a place called Wipers in 1915. I was only a nipper, can’t remember him, and I know my mom had it tough bringing up three kids. Jesus, we sometimes had to live on fresh air, and there ain’t much of that round here.’
‘It was hard after the last war,’ Ada added. ‘There was no work, and all those men thinking they was coming back to a land fit for heroes. Well, they came to the dole queue and the means-test people assessing every bloody thing in your house and telling you to sell everything before they’d give you a penny piece.’
‘And the bums tipping you out on the street if you fell behind in the rent,’ Minnie put in.
‘They must really feel as if they was cheated,’ Gloria said, ‘cos wasn’t it supposed to be “The War to End All Wars”, and here we are again.’
‘Mind you, at least we get full employment now,’ Ada said. ‘Even my bloke’s found work. He used to say the dole was like a living death.’
‘Well, there is going to be a lot more deaths before we’re done, I’d say,’ Lizzie said. ‘As you said, Ada, there is full employment now, but most of the jobs are war related. Making things to help kill and maim people.’
It was a sobering thought, and, as the women went
about their business, in the forefront of all their minds was the Prime Minister’s broadcast in the morning, though most knew that now war was inevitable.
It seemed as if everyone was holding their breath. In the Birmingham streets where Lizzie lived, the crush of humanity meant they were seldom free of noise. Now, though, not a person spoke, no children cried, no dog barked, and there wasn’t even a yowl from a stray cat.