Act of Will (37 page)

The great epic of Dunkirk was an inspiration to everyone and when Audra went around the general adult wards in the hospital, which she was now supervising, she saw how high morale was amongst her patients. Men and women alike took hold of her hand, and with tears in their eyes they spoke of their pride and their patriotism, and mentioned Churchill with reverence and love.

Audra herself had immense faith in Winston Churchill, this man who had said to them only a few weeks before: ‘
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat
.’ She understood words like that only too well, and she also understood that Dunkirk was only the beginning… Churchill had warned the British people on 4 June that a terrible storm would soon break over them to test them all. And it did.

France fell.

Suddenly England stood alone.

And then the might of the German Luftwaffe was flung against the country in bombardments that were to continue for many months to come.

The Battle of Britain had begun.

At first the bombings were centred on London and the southern counties, but they soon became more wide-spread and many of the great industrial cities and airfields in the Midlands and the North became prime targets.

Audra was cutting roses in her garden one Saturday afternoon when the drone of planes and the harsh and
relentless rattle of machine-gun fire broke the silence of the sultry day.

Her head flew up. As she squinted against the sun, she saw something she had never imagined she would see—desperate aerial combat raging in the blue summer sky immediately above her house and her precious little world.

To Audra it was a horrifying and shocking sight, this dog fight between the Air Force and the Luftwaffe. That it could happen in the middle of the day over England stunned her. She was momentarily rooted to the spot as she continued to stare up into the sky. Then one of the planes exploded in a great burst of flames and began to fall.

‘Mam! Mam!’ Christina cried, flinging down her brush and palette, running up the flagstone path.

The girl’s voice roused Audra, galvanized her into action. Grasping Christina’s hand, she raced her child back along the path and into the air-raid shelter. Audra blinked in the darkness, trying to adjust her eyes as she groped for the matches to light the candle. When she had done so, she carried it over to the orange crate that served as a table, and sat down next to Christina on a bunk bed.

‘I thought we’d better come in here for a few minutes, just in case of falling debris,’ Audra said, giving her nine-year-old child a reassuring look. She forced a bright smile. ‘I suppose we could have gone into the house, but I seem to run for the shelter these days.’

‘Everybody does, Mam.’ Christina’s brow furrowed. ‘It was one of the German planes that came down. Do you think it crashed near here, Mam?’

‘It’s hard to tell, darling… I’m not sure.’

‘It was such a lovely afternoon, and it happened so suddenly, Mam, didn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Audra stared at the corrugated-iron wall of the shelter, an abstracted look crossing her face as she murmured in a saddened voice, ‘“Hearts at peace, under an English heaven”.’

‘That’s from the book your mother gave you long ago, isn’t it, Mam?’

Audra nodded. ‘Yes, it is. Rupert Brooke. I looked up into our lovely English sky a few minutes ago, Christina, and saw those planes going at each other hammer and tongs, and that line of verse flashed through my mind. I couldn’t help wondering just when our hearts
would
be at peace again.’

A flicker of fear touched Audra’s blue eyes, and she added, ‘It might easily have been Theo up there… he is so young, only nineteen. But then all of our Air Force boys are young. Oh, I pray that Theo is safe, Christie, I pray for him every day.’

‘Yes, Mam, so do I, when I pray for Daddy and Auntie Maggie and Uncle Mike, and all of my uncles and everybody who’s fighting for us.’

***

It was not long after this incident that the Germans stepped up their bombing raids on England and although London was the chief target, Leeds was one of the northern cities that came in for heavy pummelling.

Audra and Christina now found themselves virtually living in the air-raid shelter at night. But they were the only occupants. Try though she had, Audra had been unable to persuade old Miss Dobbs to join them; the other family in the third cottage in the cul-de-sac had closed it up for the duration, and moved to the country to stay with friends.

If Laurette was visiting them when the banshee wailing of the sirens started, Audra insisted that she spend the
night with them in the shelter. She would not allow Laurette to walk home to Moorfield Road during a raid, even though the sky was brilliant with searchlights. Audra believed in following rules and regulations and they had been warned by the Civil Defence to stay inside.

The shelter was by now quite well equipped with cots, blankets and pillows, candles, paraffin lamps, a kerosene stove for heat, and a first-aid kit. Audra had stacked up tins of food, and every day she and Christina carried bottles of fresh water down to the shelter in case of emergency.

But in spite of the bombings, the perpetual fear, the worry about Vincent and the rest of their family and friends, and the hardships in general, life somehow went on.

The newspapers were full of talk about the German invasion of England in late August, but the English seemed to take this with a pinch of salt.

Audra’s attitude seemed to sum up the universal feeling when she said to Christina one day in late August, ‘Invasion or no invasion, you’re starting at Miss Mellor’s Private School for Girls when the winter term begins in September. You’ve got to have an education, whether the Germans land here or not. Besides, as Winston Churchill said, we’ll fight them in the hedges, if we have to, and demolish them to a man.’

‘You mean I
am
going to Miss Mellor’s School after all!’ Christina cried excitedly, breaking into smiles.

The two of them sat on the upper deck of the tram car going into Leeds and Audra turned to look at her. ‘Of course you are, why do you sound so surprised?’

‘Well, you haven’t mentioned it lately, even though I passed the entrance exam. I thought you’d changed your mind.’

‘Now why on earth would I change my mind, dear?’

‘I thought Grandma might have said something to you, Mam.’

‘
Grandma?
’

‘Yes. I heard her telling Grandpa that you oughtn’t to be sending me to a private school, that Christ Church was good enough. She said you had big ideas for me and that they’d only lead to trouble. I thought she’d said the same to you and that you’d listened to her.’

‘That’ll be the day,’ Audra replied with a hint of acerbity. ‘And just as a matter of interest, what did Grandpa say in response to Grandma’s comments?’

‘He said you were wise to reach for the stars, that he admired you for it, and then he told her I was going to be a great artist one day.’

Audra smiled to herself. Alfred Crowther had always been her friend. ‘Your grandfather is quite right, Christie.’

Christina tucked her arm through her mother’s companionably. ‘Is that why we’re going to town, Mam? To buy my school uniform?’

‘Yes, it is, and I’m thrilled you’re going to start at Miss Mellor’s, Christie. They have an excellent Fine Arts programme, and I’ve had several long chats with Miss Leatherson, the art teacher. She knows all about our plans, and she’ll prepare you well for Leeds College of Art.’

‘And then after that I’ll go to the Royal College of Art in London, won’t I, Mother?’ Christina looked into Audra’s face, her grey eyes bright with anticipation.

Audra could not help laughing. ‘Of course, I promised, didn’t I? But they won’t accept you until you’re twenty, you know. We’ve a long way to go yet.’

***

Christina and Audra had always been close, but they drew closer than ever during the war years. With Vincent away at sea it was just the two of them, and although they saw Laurette at least once a week, they were mostly on their own.

The glittering future she had planned for her child occupied Audra most of the time. When she wasn’t working like a Trojan and scrimping and scraping to pay for Christina’s education, she was imparting knowledge to her, finding ways to expand the child’s mind in other areas as well as in art.

Wartime conditions being what they were, there were not many plays coming to the theatre in Leeds. But when something new did open, Audra always tried to get tickets for them; she took Christina to classical music concerts and to the opera whenever a company came to Leeds. Books, too, especially the English classics, were also part of Audra’s cultural programme for her daughter, and Christina acquired a love of reading early in her life.

As always, films were the mainstay of their entertainment during the forties and they both derived a great deal of pleasure from their Saturday night jaunts to the local cinema. Usually Laurette accompanied them, for she and Audra had become dearer friends than ever, bound by so many common bonds and family ties, but mostly because of their deep and genuine love for each other.

As the war years dragged on, leaves were few and far between and neither Vincent nor Mike came home more than once between the summer of 1941 and the winter of 1942.

Both women worried a lot about their husbands who were away fighting, and about the rest of the Crowther family who were in the services. But they were women of strong character, and they learned to live with constant
air raids, life in the shelters, rationing, shortages and hardships, and the terrible fear of losing loved ones. They did so without complaint, always endeavouring to look to the future, to the day when Britain would win the war and life would return to normal.

In October of 1944 Audra had a wonderful piece of good luck. Margaret Lennox, whom she had always idolized since her days in Ripon, was appointed matron of Leeds Infirmary. And almost immediately she telephoned Audra at St Mary’s to offer her the position of sister in charge of the main surgical ward. Audra accepted the job over the telephone, without having to think twice. Although it would mean travelling to Leeds every day, the money was much more than she was earning and the job itself was a challenge. Also, Audra had always dreamed of working with Matron Lennox again.

It did not take Audra long to settle into life at Leeds General Infirmary, even though it was a vast and hectic hospital and not as cosy and intimate as St Mary’s had been. But she found the work stimulating and satisfying; as she plunged into it with her usual energy and concentration she realized that it was helping to keep fear at bay.

Christmas of 1944 was the best one Audra and Christina had had since the beginning of the war, even though Vincent was not with them and was sorely missed. Maggie was the only member of the family who came home on leave, and she managed to keep all of them in peals of laughter with her wit and funny anecdotes about life in the women’s army.

To Audra’s vast relief the new year brought good news of Allied breakthroughs all over Europe. The tide was turning and there was no longer any question who was going to win the war. It was only a matter of time.

Soon Audra was reaching for the newspapers and
switching on the radio with eagerness and excitement rather than dread. By the spring she had started to take heart, as had the whole of Britain. In March her spirits truly lifted when she read that the American First Army had crossed the Rhine over the bridge at Remagen and had established a bridgehead for the invasion of Germany. And then between 20 and 25 April the Russians entered Berlin and five days later the Third Reich collapsed. On 7 May the Germans surrendered unconditionally at Rheims in France.

Suddenly the war in Europe was over.

Audra and Christina could hardly believe it. They laughed and they wept and they laughed again, and they wept some more as they embraced each other fiercely in the cottage in Pot Lane.

Two days earlier, Christina had celebrated her fourteenth birthday and now she said to Audra, ‘But this is my best birthday present, Mam, knowing that it’s over and that Daddy’s safe.’

‘Yes, it is, darling,’ Audra replied, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. She glanced at the collection of framed photographs lined up on the sideboard: Vincent, her brother William in the Australian Forces, Mike, Theo Bell, Maggie and Vincent’s brothers Frank, Jack, Bill and Danny, and Olive’s husband Hal. How smart they looked and so proud in their different uniforms of the armed forces.

She turned to Christina and said, softly, ‘They’re all safe, thank God! How lucky we’ve been… luckier than most.’

Audra Crowther so concentrated on what she was doing in the next few years she hardly ever had time to pause, except to look at her lovely and gifted daughter.

But one day she found herself staring into the mirror on her dressing table—and taking stock.

It was a warm day in July of 1951, and later that afternoon Christina was graduating with honours from Leeds College of Art. It was a most important occasion in her daughter’s life, as well as her own and Vincent’s, and so not unnaturally she wanted to look her best.

Audra leaned closer to the glass, inspecting her face.

There were a few faint tell-tale lines around her eyes, and the stubbornness and resoluteness that had always marked her face seemed more pronounced than ever. But aside from these little flaws, if they could be called that, and a hint of grey at her temples, she decided she did not look too bad for forty-four.

Her light brown hair, cut short and framing her face in a flattering style, was still thick and luxuriant; her creamy complexion was as flawless as it had always been, and the blueness of her eyes had not dimmed over the years.

She reached for the bottle of foundation lotion. Usually she only had time to dab a powder puff on her nose and put on a trace of lipstick, before dashing off to Leeds
Infirmary, where she still worked and was now a senior member of the staff. But today she was going to take her time and do a proper job of making herself up, and to this end she had borrowed some of Christina’s cosmetics.