Birmingham Blitz (38 page)

I had a letter from Joe sounding tired out, but full of affection. This affection that felt like a miracle, still unbelievable. Then nothing. Every day I rushed to the front door, waited, heart going like mad. Got to the point of crying with fear and worry when there was nothing. He’d been writing every other day when he could. Something had to be wrong. Of course it had to be. Things didn’t go right for me.

‘Joe – oh Joe, where are you? Write to me and make it all right again!’

I was choked with emotion but like everyone else, tried to keep it down. Always waiting, things out of our control.

‘’Eard from Joe?’ the women asked.

‘No,’ I snapped, not meaning to turn on them. But they understood, kept quiet then, with knowing looks at each other.

On the Tuesday Mr Broadbent came in, so everyone suddenly put on that extra-busy look like they did whenever he put in an appearance. He took no notice, headed straight for me.

‘Could I have a word a minute, out there?’ He jerked his head at the back door, face terribly solemn.

The other women’s eyes followed me out and they all had disaster written in them. He’d heard something, I knew it. The kind of telegram only moms and dads or wives are sent. I didn’t want to follow him, didn’t want to hear it.

We went out into the yard at the back and closed the door on the warehouse. I couldn’t control myself any longer.

‘Joe’s dead, isn’t he? You’ve had a telegram?’ I couldn’t help it. My heart felt swollen fit to burst.

‘No, Genie love!’ Mr B was overcome. ‘It’s all right – we haven’t.’ He put an arm round my shoulders as if he was my own dad. He wasn’t that much bigger than me, smaller than Joe by nearly a head.

‘I was only going to ask you if you’d heard from ’im, that’s all. He’s a good lad for letter writing but I’m sure ’e’d write to his young lass more than to us.’ He was trying to sound light-hearted, make a bit of a joke of it, but I could hear the worry in his voice and this didn’t help me, though I was grateful for his kindness.

I shook my head, tears pouring down my face. ‘I haven’t had a letter since Friday.’

‘Oh,’ Mr Broadbent said soberly. ‘I see.’

Words were swirling round in my head. Where are you Joe? I can’t bear it, I just can’t bear it.

‘Look.’ Mr B rallied himself. ‘They’re very busy, under a lot of pressure. He’ll get in touch when he can, love. I’m sure there’s an explanation.’

The explanation, the only one possible it seemed, hung in the air between us like a cloud of flies and Mr Broadbent looked sorry he’d spoken.

‘Just hold on, Genie. The moment I hear anything I’ll let you know, all right? And you do the same, eh?’ He patted my back. ‘You take your time now, as much as you need, before you go back in there.’

The endless, gnawing worry took away most of my happiness in knowing Dad was alive. Nothing compared with the way I felt about Joe, how we’d had this bit of time together that was almost too good to be true. I couldn’t talk to Mom about it, she was too wrapped up in herself. Only Teresa knew how sick with worry I was. Carlo had left for his army training and she came round to see me of an evening sometimes, knowing I’d just sit and fret.

‘I know now,’ Teresa said to me as we sat together that evening. ‘Seeing the way you’re feeling. If I thought something’d happened to Carlo I’d be exactly the same. Funny how I never saw him before, right there under my nose. Always trying to get away from the Italians and be different. This lot has made me see us all properly, the good that’s there. I was such a stupid little cow, wasn’t I?’

I managed a grin. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite that strong.’

‘Hear that?’ Teresa said. ‘Wasn’t that your door?’

There was another, louder knock.

Mr Broadbent was outside in the dusk, face all smiles, handing me a folded piece of paper.

‘You’d never believe it – blooming postman delivered this wrong. It came two days ago and they put it through at 87.’

I must’ve just gawped at him.

‘We’re number 37,’ Mr Broadbent explained. ‘Joe didn’t write it any too clear. He must’ve been in a rush. We’ve not been living there long, so they didn’t know to pass it on to us. It’s OK, Genie. Joe’s all right.’

When he’d gone I opened it.

I sat down opposite Teresa and burst into tears.

The daylight air battles petered out in the middle of the month. The Germans had worked their way through attacking the coastal convoys, the airfields, the control centres, and now they turned their attention on the cities. London was getting it every night. Churchill made his famous speech about ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ They were heroes of the age, those flyers.

I was so proud of Joe, but I never had a minute’s peace. His letter was like having him back from the dead, but I was sure that would never happen again. I knew he was alive and safe each time he wrote, but by the time it reached me? And the next day, and the next? I felt so unworthy of him I just could not believe he’d survive and come back to me.

This was different from anything I’d felt before. Frightening, because I couldn’t just brush it off like I could with Walt or Jimmy. Joe had marked my heart and I couldn’t get away from it.

That week Mom handed in her notice at work and a day or two later she was summoned to the Labour Exchange. She came back fuming with humiliation.

‘D’you know what that hoity-toity little bit said to me? Cut-glass accent she had, can’t have been much older than you. “Well, Mrs Watkins.”’ Mom was pretty good at taking off other people’s voices. ‘“Are you quait sure you heven’t got yourself in the femily way in order to get orf war work? Surely at your age you wouldn’t normally be plenning to enlorge your femily?” Stuck up little bitch. What’s she doing in a soft job like that anyhow? She could be in the army or summat.

‘Anyhow, I told her she could keep her airs and graces and not talk to her elders and betters like that. She didn’t like that, I can tell you.’ Mom was roving round the room tidying, slamming things down on the table.

‘Did they say you could give up war work though?’

‘Yes, in the end,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘Bugger this cowing war. Your life’s not your own any more, is it?’

Music while you Work
was blaring out as usual. ‘We’ll Meet Again . . .’ and ‘Bless ’em All’ – thank goodness for the jolly ones because they didn’t touch me. Horrible, being wrung out by music all day long. I wished they’d switch the flaming thing off half the time. My eyes and hands worked automatically, head down, not joining in with the jokes. They kept trying to cheer me up, bless them, but even though I tried to put on a brave face, nothing worked. I’d had one more very short note from Joe, but I’d got myself in such a state I was always consumed by worry.

‘Genie!’ A call passed along the warehouse. I hadn’t seen the yard door open wide enough for his head to poke round. ‘Mr B wants you out the back.’

All those eyes watching and my legs watery, nearly letting me down. If it was good news about Joe he’d have come right in. Run and told everyone, because after all everyone loved him, not just me.

By the time I reached that door I was trembling so much I could barely get it open. Someone helped, twisted the handle, shut it behind me.

My first breath on the other side of that door I gasped in so hard you could hear it. He was standing waiting for me across the yard, half smiling, uncertain. The time he’d been away felt so long.

‘Oh—’ I gasped again, grinding my fist into the middle of my chest. For a moment I couldn’t speak. Breath came in jerks and pants.

‘Genie . . .?’

I didn’t remember crossing the yard. I might’ve flown for all I know. I was holding him, squeezing his arms, pressing his cheeks between my hands, pulling him to me tight, kissing and kissing his lovely face.

He didn’t speak at first, calmed me with his hands, taking me by the shoulders to hold me at arm’s length, and we looked at each other. His face was thinner, cheeks covered with a day’s growth of stubble, dark eyes full of emotion. He pulled me to him and held me so tight.

‘Joe, Joe—’ My tears flowed, like fear dissolving down my face. ‘Oh my God, are you all right?’

He nodded. ‘I’m fine. On top.’

‘You’re here.’ I couldn’t let go of him, couldn’t stop saying it again and again. ‘You’re here – really here . . .’

‘Yes—’ He sounded as if he couldn’t believe it himself. ‘Finally made it.’

‘Don’t ever, ever go away again,’ I demanded.

Joe was holding me, laughing as Mr Broadbent came back out smiling, the worry lifted from him. He even looked taller. I mopped my eyes.

‘Thought I’d leave you both for a bit,’ he said. ‘Betty, my wife, telephoned to say Joe’d got home and I said she’d better send him up here quick because there was someone losing a lot of sleep over ’im.’

Joe smiled properly for the first time. ‘Thanks, Dad. But I was coming anyway.’

He only had four days and we spent every possible moment we could together. At the end of the week, while I was at work he stayed at home with his mom and sisters, catching up on sleep after the punishing weeks he’d been through. But he was young and very fit and he bounced back.

His first evening home Mr Broadbent asked me to come over and spend some time with them.

‘Are you sure you don’t just want him to yourselves?’ I asked, uncertain about being included in the family like this. I knew Mr B was OK with me but I wasn’t sure about the rest of them.

‘Course not. And anyhow, if we don’t get you along we shan’t be able to tie Joe into his seat long enough to get anything out of ’im!’

I was nervous about meeting Joe’s mom and his sisters. What on earth were they going to think of me? Marjorie, the sister who’d been at Broadbent’s show, opened the door of their recently built house in Hall Green with its fresh-looking white window-frames.

‘We were just finishing off tea,’ she said. I saw she had Joe’s dark eyes and the same pale hair and skin. She did have an aloof manner but I think it was shyness, and she was trying to be nice to me.

‘Sorry. Am I too early? I could go and walk round for a bit . . .’

‘No!’ She thawed further and laughed. ‘We’re expecting you. I’ll never hear the end of it from Joe if I send you off again. Come and join us.’

Joe was coming out to meet me and introduced me to everyone – his mom and Marjorie and Louise. And he made it very clear I was someone special, brought me in as if I were royalty.

Marjorie was soon to be twenty-one, according to Joe, though as we sat round that evening I kept looking at her, trying to take this in. I couldn’t help feeling I was older than her. There was something cardboard about her. Amiable enough, but with a bit missing somehow. She seemed like someone who was afraid of life, even her own shadow.

Joe sat beside me on their sofa and I basked in being close to him. Mr and Mrs Broadbent were in chairs on either side of the little tiled fireplace. Mrs Broadbent was, over all, a very pale woman. Looked as if she’d had a bad shock, the colour of her. Her hair was white-blond and her skin ashen and thin-looking so that you could see the veins in her neck. I was trying to puzzle out how she’d managed to build up the vile reputation she had round the factory. I came to the conclusion that because she was beautiful and fragile-looking she was like a red rag to a bull for some of those women. They were expected to be tough, coping, hard-working, whatever time of the month, stage of pregnancy or chronic illness they were suffering. Mrs B looked like one of those Victorian women who might get the ‘vapours’. Actually her health seemed quite all right. Her manipulative illnesses must have been a factory legend that started small and swelled into something much bigger.

The fact was she was quiet and shy and pleasant and I was grateful to her that she didn’t seem to mind me. After all, if she’d been half the snob she was painted as being she’d’ve objected to her son courting a factory lass. Maybe she thought it’d all blow over and he’d grow out of me, but either way, she was kind to me.

‘I hear your father’s been in contact,’ she said, passing me an oatmeal biscuit. ‘What a relief that must be.’

‘Oh it is. Couldn’t believe it when we heard. It’s been so long, and no one telling us either way.’

‘Like someone else we could mention.’ Louise, Joe’s younger sister, nudged him with her foot. She wasn’t much older than me, with jet-black hair, Joe’s cocoa-brown eyes and a lot of spark to her. She was in her last year at the grammar school. Her hair was cut in a pageboy with her fringe long and dead straight, level with her eyebrows. ‘Next time just send us a piece of paper every day with a cross on or something, and then at least we’ll know the Jerries haven’t had you for breakfast.’

‘Sorry,’ Joe said, for what was obviously far from the first time. ‘I did my best. It’s not my fault if the postman can’t read . . .’

‘You’ve always had illegible handwriting,’ Louise retorted, slouching back in her chair. ‘Why
do
boys always write so much worse than girls?’

I wanted to tell her to shut up and leave Joe alone but fortunately his dad did it for me. ‘Leave ’im, Louise,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I thought you were off out?’