Birmingham Blitz (19 page)

What a question. ‘No,’ I said, thinking, no more than anyone else round here anyhow. Jimmy was keen on kissing. Ever so keen.

‘What about Len and Molly?’ she asked suddenly.

‘What about them?’

‘Are they behaving themselves? I don’t want any trouble on my hands from them two.’

‘They’re all right.’ She may have been my pal all of a sudden but I wasn’t going to go and spoil things for Len. ‘They keep each other company in the evenings.’

‘So long as that’s all they’re doing.’

‘Mom?’

She raised her eyebrows.

‘Is Bob ever coming back?’

‘Genie – I’ve told you.’ She gave a big sigh. ‘I love Bob. He loves me.’

‘But what about my dad?’ My voice turned squeaky and tearful. ‘What’re you going to do?’ It felt as if the world was falling apart.

She got up and went over to the window, stood with her back to me in her white nightdress. ‘I don’t know. Can’t seem to think about it. I keep hoping it’ll just sort itself out, one way or another.’

I was crying quietly behind her. ‘But what about when Dad comes home?’

‘I’ve told you—’ She turned to me again, half angry but near tears herself. ‘I don’t know, do I? This has never happened to me before. Don’t think I don’t feel badly about your father. He’s a good man and he don’t deserve it, I know. But I can’t throw away what I’ve found. Bob’s come along and I feel as if he’s saved me – saved my life.’

‘’E hasn’t really got a wife and kiddies, has ’e?’

‘No.’ She at least looked ashamed of this lie. ‘He hasn’t.’

I pushed my face down into the prickly blanket, hugging my knees, rocking back and forth. ‘I want my dad. I want him home. I want things to be all right again.’

She sat by me, even stroked my back. ‘I’m sorry, Genie,’ she said eventually. ‘But Bob’s the man I love.’

After his short bout of quarantine, Bob was back and I was faced with an offensive of charm.

‘Hello Genie,’ he said when he first came back one Saturday morning, his tone sounding as if I, not Mom, was his long lost love. He produced a bunch of daffs from behind his back like a conjuror with a rabbit. ‘These are for you. To make friends.’ He stuck a really sick-making smile on his brawny face.

‘You’d better give them to Mom. Flowers make me sneeze.’ I flung the bright yellow blooms on the table as if they were dog muck.

Bob clenched his teeth but he didn’t say anything. He stood in the back room with his hands in his trouser pockets. I didn’t remember inviting him in but he seemed to be there anyhow.

‘All right are you, Len?’ he said in the stupid, jolly voice people seemed to think they’d got to put on with Lenny just because he was a bit simple, as if he needed humouring. Len grinned obligingly. But then Len’d have grinned at Adolf Hitler if he’d happened to pop in. He was like that. Bob turned round and about, jingled coins in the pockets of his loud checked suit. I stood watching him, po-faced.

He tried again: ‘That’s a right pretty frock you’re got on there, Genie.’ Then he coughed. ‘Very nice.’ I glowered at him. ‘Your mom knows I’m here then, does she?’

‘No.’

‘How about telling her then? There’s a good girl.’

‘Mom!’ I yelled up the stairs without shifting myself. ‘
He
’s here.’

She looked ever so nervous when she came down. She had her hair up and was wearing a pretty, tight dress which hugged her waist and her small bosoms. Bob’s eyes swept up and down, devouring her, dirty sod.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. Nan was expecting me.

‘We’ll all have to go out together one day, won’t we Bob?’ Mom said brightly. ‘To the pictures or something. Get to know each other better. You’d like that, wouldn’t you Genie?’

I didn’t even bother answering that one.

Teresa was rather full of herself. Working outside the family business had turned her head.

‘Don’t know what you see in it,’ I told her, since for the moment I was finding more freedom working in my family’s business than out of it. ‘Clocking on, and at someone’s beck and call every minute of the day.’

‘Yes, but it feels like a real job. And I feel as if I’ve grown up.’

‘And you get to see Jack? When am I going to meet lover boy then?’

Teresa hesitated. Even with her olive skin she blushed easily. ‘Yes – I see Jack,’ she said, very offhand.

What was going on here then? ‘I thought that’s just what you wanted?’

‘I did – do. Only . . .’ In her eyes I could suddenly see a funny little gleam. ‘Oh Genie – there’s the most gorgeous feller at the factory. It’s mostly girls there of course – but he brings all the supplies in and he’s forever stopping for a chat. Specially with me.’ I could well imagine. I could hear Teresa’s wonderful, life-giving laugh echoing out across the factory floor.

‘But Teresa, I thought Jack was the be all and end all, your one and only—’

‘Oh, I’m still walking out with Jack,’ she said hastily. ‘Only I can’t help liking Clem. He’s got the most beautiful green eyes.’

Oh yes, green eyes? I didn’t believe in green eyes. I mean I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and say I’d ever in my life seen anyone whose eyes were truly green.

I was hanging on to what I had with Jimmy. Which wasn’t much. But I needed someone. Truth was, after his opening outburst of affection and that first breathless kiss Jimmy hadn’t poured out much in the way of feelings. In fact he never said very much at all.

A typical date with Jimmy went like this. We usually went out on a Saturday. Shirl came to be with our nan, even though Nan was better and hobbling about with a stick.

Jimmy and I would meet, him grinning away in anticipation. He’d take my hand and sometimes we’d go to a matinée at the Carlton, or if it was fine we’d walk in the park. And I’d try to get him to talk. I told him my nan was better.

‘Oh well – that’s good.’ End of that conversation.

‘I might look for another job soon.’

‘Oh ah.’

Another attempt. ‘D’you still like me, Jimmy?’

‘Course. Wouldn’t be ’ere else, would I?’

I was even forced to ask about football. Problem was, we just hadn’t got anything to say to each other. Was this something I was supposed to mind, I wondered? I thought about married people I knew. Mom and Dad had never had a lot in the way of conversation, other than what was needed to get by. Lil and Patsy had at least had a laugh together. But what I wanted to know was, was this the very best you could expect? I’d hoped for something a bit more like being friends with Teresa. Getting on, feeling the warmth and excitement of seeing her, laughing together. Was it normal to find your mind wandering when a man kissed you and to be thinking up a shopping list in your head, or wondering why it was Jimmy’s mouth often tasted just a bit of rhubarb when it wasn’t even in season?

After he thought we’d indulged in enough pleasantries, Jimmy set to with the real business of the date so far as he was concerned. It’d be back of the cinema as the picture flickered on high above us (I’d try to twist into a position so I could at least watch it as well, over his shoulder). Or in the park, or a doorway on the Stratford Road monkey run while near us, girls snatched handkerchieves out of the boys’ breast pockets – you name it, Jimmy took his chances. Blimey, the hours I spent locked, more than half bored, in Jimmy’s grasp. Sometimes he got bold and tried to worm his fingers into my coat, inside my dress, but I wasn’t having that.

‘Oi – you can get out of there.’

He’d give me a sheepish grin and those lips would come close again. So far none of it was like Lil said. Certainly not the best, dreamiest feeling in the world. Frankly I’d rather’ve had a more tasty sort of gobstopper like a bag of Brazil nut toffees. Except that he was there and he wanted me and kept coming back for more.

Maybe I’m not normal, I thought. Teresa seemed to get a lot more of a thrill out of a man than I did. Perhaps all my housewifery and careworn life and all that was going on at home had made me old too soon?

Bob, like the proverbial rash, was back with a vengeance. Our house was nothing short of a knocking shop and it was getting me right down. First of the evening shift was Len and Molly. They didn’t seem to be pushing the boat right to its full limits with sex, but having those two snogging in front of me half the evening was a disturbing enough sight. Didn’t know where to put myself. If we’d had a proper coal shed I’d have gone and sat in it.

I did as many things to distract them as I could. I got them playing rummy, gave them things to eat, made endless cups of tea, switched Gloria on. I was cooking our meals back at our house by now, but sometimes I went out to my nan’s, prepared to brave the walk back later through the black streets rather than face the canoodlings of Len and his Moll. After all, he was thirty now. I was just in the way.

Second shift, on nights they could manage it, were the other two love birds. Now they’d moved into the house, the Anderson shelter not being the ideal place to carry on a romance, particularly because as the ground was no longer frozen it was sometimes ankle deep in water. I saw the first signs of trouble when the crocheted blanket appeared again, folded over the back of a chair like it had always been before.

Thing was, Mom was still being uncannily nice to me. She did the ironing and brought me the odd treat when she could: sweets or bits of clothes, some new black shoes with a bow on the strap. I knew perfectly well it was hush money, bribes to keep me sweet, but at the same time I couldn’t bear to lose it. The price was knowing she took Bob up to my father’s bed while I sat and cried downstairs and Len, alone by this time of night, comforted me.

‘S’all right Genie, s’all right.’

‘It’s not sodding well all right,’ I’d sob, cringing in myself at the slightest sound from upstairs. But they were quite quiet, I’ll grant them. Len and I put Gloria on loud as we dared and tried to drown out even the slightest sign that they were there. I did a lot of that in those days – blocking things out, closing my eyes, my ears and my very heart.

Some nights when I thought Bob was coming, sickly sweet as he was to me these days, I just stayed over at Nan’s and slept on the prickly horsehair sofa by the dying heat from the range and the ticking of her clock.

It didn’t take Nan long to catch on. ‘I’m not a fool, you know, Genie. What’s going on with Doreen?’

I couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Nothing, Nan.’

She sat quiet for a minute, the stick resting by her leg, her breathing loud, wheezy on her chest. ‘Is she carrying on behind your dad’s back?’

I couldn’t tell her a real lie. Not Nan. I just sat there, wanting to die of shame.

‘Genie?’

‘She’s got a – friend.’

‘Thought so. She’d been like a bitch on heat since Christmas. I noticed it then but I gave her the benefit of the doubt.’ Nan pursed her lips, face grim. ‘Selfish little cow. Always been the same when it came to riding roughshod over everyone else.’ The extent of her anger took me by surprise.

I was relieved Nan knew, but frightened to death at the same time. Mom’d never forgive me for letting it slip and if she found out I’d lose her again, just when we were getting on so well.

‘She says . . .’ I began timidly. ‘She’s never been happy with my dad.’

‘Happy?
Happy.
’ She turned the word round and about like someone looking for the chip at the edge of a saucer. ‘You show me someone who thinks they are happy. A marriage is a marriage and that’s that. Wasting time dwelling on whether you’re happy or not is a sure way into trouble.’

I looked at her tough, lined face. Mom had told me that Grandpa Rawson used to bash her about till sometimes her face was almost unrecognizable. I wasn’t sure whether her missing teeth had dropped out with each child born or whether they’d been knocked from her gums by his fist. He didn’t restrain himself any better when she was carrying a child. She’d miscarried two on account of his violence. But even when she managed to lease the shop, when she had more money and could’ve got shot of him, she carried on, steadfast, in a marriage she’d chosen. ‘Where would leaving ’im have got me?’ And then he died. If there was anyone, Mom always said, who deserved heart failure, old man Rawson was the one.

‘Don’t say anything to ’er, will you?’ I begged. ‘Not at the moment. Things are all right really.’

‘Are they?’ Nan’s voice was sarky as it ever got. ‘So what’re you doing sleeping here on my couch?’

I saw Teresa now and then. I wasn’t sure about the latest of what she was up to and at the moment I didn’t really care. I presumed she was thinking up all the backhand ways she could manage to meet Jack or Clem or whoever the hell it was. Good sodding luck to her.

One night though, she came round to Nan’s.

‘I was hoping you was still here.’ She looked a bit down. ‘Fancy coming to ours for a bit?’

I suppose I wasn’t very gracious greeting her. My mind was back in Balsall Heath, wondering anxiously what might be going on in our house.

‘You go on,’ Nanny Rawson said. She was standing ironing at the table which was swathed in an old, singed blanket. ‘Do you good to have some young company.’

At the Spinis’ I found Teresa’s Dad in a bad state. He was downstairs, in a chair by the hearth, but his face was very pale, his skin clammy, and he seemed only able to talk in a whisper. Opposite him sat Fausto Pirelli, the young man who’d been in the shop that day they were all yelling at each other. His shadow fell on the wall beside him, nose like a hawk’s beak. He was talking, on and on in Italian in a soft, earnest voice, with a frown on his face. Micky seemed agitated, kept trying to interrupt, but when he tried to speak it ended in a bout of agonized coughing.