Far From Home (33 page)

‘Didn't know it would take me so long to walk.'

‘You walked,' Rita exclaimed. ‘It's one hefty step from where you live.'

‘I know. I'll probably take the tram back.'

‘Did you come for anything special?'

‘No,' Kate said. ‘I was at a loose end and I thought I would pop in and see if you wanted anything.'

‘Oh, I do,' Rita said. ‘I am gasping for a cup of tea. Could you make one while I finish this sheet?'

‘Yeah, course,' Kate said, and she went into the little kitchenette off the office and filled the kettle as John came in the door. She put the kettle on the gas ring, but the water hadn't boiled when the sounds of sirens were heard. They all stopped dead still for a moment, not sure what to do. ‘Surely not,' John said. ‘It's been a bloody year, for God's sake.'

‘Maybe it's a false alarm,' said Kate, but the words weren't quite out of her mouth when the distinct drone of planes could be heard. ‘God Almighty, this is no false alarm,' Rita cried. ‘Turn that gas off, Kate, and help me and John get everyone into the cellars – and quick.'

There were over two thousand people in the hostel,
counting the babies and children, and most were frightened and bemused. They poured from their rooms into the corridors, asking questions and needing answers, but there were no reassuring answers to give. ‘They had already lost all before them, all they possessed,' they said. ‘And now was it to start again?'

Rita, John and Kate shook their heads helplessly and urged speed. Easier said than done. Many of the elderly stumbled around crying and disorientated in bewilderment and dismay. Babies and young children were already asleep, and often wailing and fractious when woken, too sleepy to be helpful. The older children were little better and the mothers impatient, trying to help them with fingers made clumsy with fear.

The droning planes drew ever nearer and the first explosions could be heard, causing some to let out the odd shriek or yelp to rise above the general noise of the distressed and frightened people. Kate carried many babies and children down into the basement that night, and helped the elderly and the frail, trying to soothe the terribly anxious. She felt no fear for herself, just a smouldering anger.

The raid had been going on for about an hour when John went for a look around after a particularly loud explosion had shook the building. When he came back in he said to Kate, ‘Freer Road has had it. Fair few casualties. Can you come?'

‘Course I can come,' Kate said. ‘I might be able to treat some of the walking wounded.' And so saying she followed John up the cellar steps as the ack-ack guns began to bark into the dusky summer sky. ‘Where
were the bloody gunners till now?' John grumbled as they scurried along. ‘Fast asleep?'

Kate, once more breathing in the smoke and the dust and feeling the acrid stink of explosives lodge in the back of her throat, said, ‘You can hardly blame them. As you said, it has been a full year since there has been anything at all.'

‘Yeah, well, let this be a lesson to us all,' John said grimly. ‘We can't rest easy in our beds until this blasted war is over and done.'

Freer Road was in disarray. Piles of rubbish and masonry lay in heaps and mounds where there were once people's homes. Two ambulances were loading stretchers when she arrived, but other injured people were milling round, their stunned faces grey with brick dust. And to deal with all these people was one valiant Red Cross worker. ‘I'm an ARP warden,' Kate said, ‘but I was off duty tonight. I'm fully trained in first aid.' She saw relief pass over the nurse's face as she shrugged her arms helplessly and said, ‘Do what you can.'

And Kate did what she could, which was mainly cleaning, dressing and bandaging wounds. It was some time later when she was directed to a specific mound. People pulled out of a collapsed cellar had been seated on the ground, next to a mound of masonry, all that was left of a terrace of houses, when the unstable stack suddenly began to cave in, burying the people who had been near to it.

She set to work immediately, as did many more, moving the debris to reach the trapped people beneath. She didn't notice the fractured roof beam balanced
precariously on top of a pile of broken bricks, until it became dislodged as the rescuers toiled on. ‘Watch out!' someone called to Kate, and she glanced up to see the beam heading straight for her. She tried to move but it was too late. It cracked on to the side of her head and she knew no more.

 

When Kate opened her heavy eyes she shut them again quickly because the brightness caused a pain to throb behind them. But the movement had been noted, and when she heard a voice call her name she forced open her eyelids again, squinting to see who it was. ‘Where am I?'

‘The General Hospital,' the owner of the voice said. ‘You had an argument with a roof beam, according to the ambulance driver, and you came off worse.'

Kate remembered the raid and then helping the Red Cross nurse and then the buildings that had collapsed on the people and toiling to free them, but she couldn't remember being hit herself and she told the nurse this. ‘Best not remembering that,' the nurse said as she tucked her in. ‘Doctor said you must have a skull like an elephant. Have you a headache?'

Kate nodded and then wished she hadn't.

‘Daren't give you anything till Doctor says so,' the nurse said. ‘But I can get you a drink of water, if you'd like one. Then, if I were you, I'd try to sleep again, because he won't be around for some hours but he will be very pleased that you are conscious at last.'

‘Why, how long have I been here?'

‘You were brought in about half eleven Monday
night,' the nurse said. ‘And now it's half past three on Wednesday morning.'

‘Wednesday morning!' Kate exclaimed, throwing back the bedclothes. ‘I can't stay here. People will be worried about me.'

‘It's all right,' the nurse said, settling her back down on the pillows. ‘People from a hostel in Aston came to see what had happened to you. Said they were friends.'

‘John and Rita Taylor.'

‘That's the ones,' the nurse said. ‘And they were going to tell everyone how you are and that, and all you have got to do is get better. And now I'll get that water.'

Surprisingly, after a long drink of water, Kate was quite happy to close her eyes again. When she next opened them, bowls of porridge were being distributed.

The doctor, when he came some time after breakfast, seemed very pleased with Kate. ‘You are one lucky girl,' he said. ‘You have such a gash on your forehead that I was sure you had fractured your skull, but you haven't.'

Kate gingerly fingered the wound she could feel. ‘It's been stitched.'

‘Oh, yes,' the doctor said. ‘It was too deep not to stitch it. That's what I say. That beam must have given you one hell of a crack. As I said before, you are lucky. Your mother didn't get off so lightly, but the indications are that she will make a full recovery in time.'

Kate was staring at him open-mouthed. ‘My mother?'

The doctor thought Kate must be suffering lapses
of memory because of the bang on the head. He said patiently, ‘Yes, she was with you when the building collapsed. She was buried while you—'

‘Doctor, you are making a big mistake,' Kate said. ‘My mother is alive and well on a farm in Northern Ireland. I don't live in the area I was found in, but in  Stockland Green. I am an ARP warden, though not in uniform because I was not officially on duty. I was just visiting friends in a nearby hostel when the bombs hit. As I have first-aid skills and experience in getting people out of buildings, I was asked to help. I'm not related to anyone there.'

‘I am very sorry, Mrs Burton,' the doctor said. ‘You look so very alike, and pulled in from the same area, I just assumed …'

‘It's all right,' Kate said. ‘I can understand you thinking that, particularly if there was a strong resemblance.'

‘There is. It was almost uncanny.'

‘What was her name, as a matter of interest?'

‘Ah, let me see,' said the doctor, closing his eyes to try to picture the woman who'd been brought in. ‘You must realize that I saw a lot of people that night.'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘They will have it in the records.'

‘Oh, it's not that important.'

‘Oh, no, wait,' the doctor cried. ‘I have it. The name on her identity card was Helen something. Helen … Helen … Helen … Logue. That was it! I know it wasn't the same name as yours, but you have a wedding ring, so I didn't expect it would be.'

‘No,' Kate said. ‘Oh, well, no harm done.'

‘None whatsoever,' the doctor said. ‘And there's even better news because, if you are a good girl today, rest plenty and do as you are told, you can go home on Friday. You will have to have the injury on your forehead seen to, but that can be done through the clinic in Outpatients.'

‘Oh, that's the best news yet,' Kate said happily.

 

Kate was sitting in a chair by her bed when Susie and Sally went in to see her that evening and were delighted at the news that she would soon be out. ‘I bet you were worried,' Kate said to Sally.

‘I would have been if I could have got home,' Sally said. ‘But we were in the cellar underneath the cinema till the early hours and the “All Clear” went. I would have chanced it and tried to get home but my friends wouldn't come with me and the American boys seemed scared stiff and it wasn't even that bad a raid. Anyway, they talked me into staying, and so when I did reach home I just thought you'd gone to bed. I would have been frantic by the next morning, but that steward you know, John Taylor is it?'

‘That's right.'

‘Well, he came up and told me,' Sally said. ‘Had to knock good and loud 'cos I had gone out like a light when I got in. It didn't half shake me up when he told me what had happened to you and then I sent him to Susie's so she could tell them at work and that.'

‘How good of John,' Kate said. ‘Is he here? I would love to thank him.'

‘No,' Susie said. ‘No good them coming; they knew they wouldn't get to see you.'

‘Yeah, they were sniffy enough about us,' Sally said. ‘In the end I said I had to see you because you were coming home soon and we had to make arrangements.'

‘And I said I was your sister too, otherwise I would have had to sit in the corridor,' Susie said. ‘And even then they said we could only have a few minutes. The point is above anything else we both wanted to see you. It's all right people saying that you are all right and it is quite another seeing it for ourselves.'

‘Are they letting you home soon?' Sally asked.

‘Mm, Friday the doctor said.'

‘How are you getting home?' Sally asked. ‘Are they sending you in an ambulance?'

‘Don't be daft, I'll be well enough to go by tram,' Kate said. ‘They won't waste ambulances on people like me.'

‘Are you sure you will be all right to do that?'

‘Yes, perfectly,' Kate said. ‘You are not to fuss me, Sally. You know I don't like it.'

‘All right, all right,' Sally said. ‘Have it your way, as usual, but one thing we are going to do when you are out of here and that is go to Mammy for a while – and as soon as possible. I have already written to ask her.'

‘All right,' Kate said. ‘But the cut on my forehead had to be stitched and I have to have the stitches taken out in a week or so. I would like to have that done before I go anywhere.'

The nurse put her head around the door to say it was time for Sally and Susie to leave. Sally said as she stood up, ‘I'll be up to see you tomorrow evening and
then on Friday I will come in on the tram and we can go home together,' Sally said.

‘There's no need for you to do that.'

‘I know that, you dope, but I'm going to do it anyway,' Sally said decisively.

After they had both gone, Kate wondered why she'd not mentioned Helen Logue to them. Of course they hadn't been allowed to stay long, but Kate somehow knew that however long they'd stayed she would never have told them, and she couldn't explain why that was. She somehow wanted to keep it to herself, and yet she was very curious as to what the woman looked like.

And so, when the night staff came on, she asked the nurse that had attended her when she'd first woken up if she could see her. ‘You shouldn't really,' the night nurse said. ‘But I understand you wanting a look. I would myself. Honestly, the only difference between you is that you have a plaster on your forehead covering stitches. The likeness between you is unbelievable. We'll have to wait until Matron is out of the way, or we will at the very least have our ears scalded, and you can't stay long because she's heavily sedated and in a room of her own, but I'll give you the nod.'

And so later that night, Kate followed the nurse out of the ward and down the corridor and a few moments later she was looking at a mirror image of herself lying in a hospital bed. The woman was older than Kate, though her face was remarkably unlined, but she looked more mature. Apart from that, the likeness was quite startling.

‘Sort of creepy, isn't it?' said the nurse as they stole back to the ward and Kate got back into bed.

‘I suppose so,' Kate said. ‘But don't they say everyone has got a double?'

‘Yeah, I have heard that said all right.'

‘Then I'm not going to give it another thought,' Kate said. ‘I'm going to concentrate on getting better so that I can go home on Friday.'

‘Only thing you can do,' the nurse said, and she turned the light down low and Kate settled herself to sleep.

Kate was unable to go to work until her stitches were removed because of the risk of infection. ‘Why worry?' Sally said when she told her this on Friday morning. ‘You really need to take time off anyway, Kate. You had a real shock to your system. You have done the first-aid course same as me and you know the sort of things shock can do.'

‘I'm not the least bit shocked.'

‘Course you're not,' Sally said sarcastically. ‘Not you, super-woman Kate. Anyway, aren't we decided to go and see Mammy? I wrote to her as I said and had her reply by return saying that she will be delighted to see us both so don't try and wriggle out of that. Susie has arranged holidays from work for you and, as you've never had any proper holidays, she said there was no problem there. And you can make all the arrangements about the boat and train now you'll have the time.'

Kate knew the days would yawn emptily in front of her as she wasn't one to laze about, and she also knew that if the Blitz was going to start again she needed a breathing space. And there was a chance that it might,
because there had been another raid the previous night. The hospital had been on the alert to evacuate patients to the basement, but in the end, there had been no need as the raid had been a fairly light one and confined to the south of the city and was over in three hours. ‘But Hitler used tactics like that before,' Sally reminded Kate as they travelled home on the tram together. ‘You know, softly-softly and then wallop.'

‘I know,' Kate said with a sigh. ‘I do hope it isn't starting again, though. I mean, the place has taken such a battering already. Birmingham might be wiped off the map altogether if we have another Blitz.'

Sally shivered. ‘Ooh, don't let's think about it, Kate,' she advised. ‘Let's just concentrate on getting away from it for a while anyway.'

Kate nodded. She knew it didn't do to worry about what might happen. What did happen was quite enough to be going on with. Sally stayed at home with Kate that day and Susie came round that night and they went to see
Masquerade
, which was showing at the Plaza, and they laughed together as if they hadn't got a care in the world.

The following Monday, Kate went in to New Street Station to make the travel arrangements. They would be travelling the following Saturday, 8 August, which fitted in well with the hospital because the nurse at the Outpatient Clinic wanted to remove the stitches in Kate's forehead on the day before. And so that Friday morning, Kate returned to the hospital. ‘It's healed up beautifully,' the nurse said as she pulled the last stitch through.

‘Will there be a scar?'

The nurse nodded. ‘A slight one,' she said. ‘Though
it will fade in time. Meanwhile, cosmetics will mask it a bit; that is of course if you can find any.'

Kate smiled ruefully because make-up, obviously not considered essential for the nation's survival, had virtually disappeared from the shops. ‘It's like looking for a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow trying to get hold of just one lipstick,' she said. ‘I might do better to grow a fringe.'

‘You might at that,' the nurse agreed with a smile. ‘But for now I am going to put a dressing on to protect it a little.'

It was as Kate was walking back through the hospital on her way home that she bumped into the nurse who had dealt with her previously, and greeted her. ‘Hallo,' the nurse responded. ‘How are you feeling now?'

‘Fine.'

‘No headaches or anything?'

‘Not a thing.'

‘Lucky you.'

‘That's what you said before,' Kate reminded her. ‘So, how's life treating you?'

‘Oh, better now I am over the night shift,' the nurse said. ‘Oh, I'll tell you a funny thing. You know the woman that looked so like you?'

‘Yes, I remember,' Kate said. ‘Did she recover all right?'

‘Well, I suppose she did,' the nurse said. ‘The fact is, she disappeared.'

‘Disappeared?'

‘Yeah, just a few days after you left, and it was just after one of the nurses had mentioned you – you know, how alike the two of you were – and the next minute
she had gone,' the nurse told her. ‘I mean, they didn't know she had gone at first. They thought she was in the washroom, and it was only after she had been there some time that they went to look there. It was empty, and when they checked her locker, her clothes and her bag were missing too. She must have smuggled the whole lot into the washroom under her nightie.'

‘How odd,' said Kate. ‘But it couldn't have been what you said to the woman about me that caused her to take flight, because as I said I had never seen her before in my life.'

‘No,' the nurse agreed. ‘Must have been a coincidence.'

‘Was she well enough to leave hospital?'

‘Not really,' the nurse said. ‘Especially when she hadn't anywhere to go. You said she was bombed out.'

‘Yeah, the whole street was down.'

‘Well, there's nothing to stop a person signing themselves out of hospital,' the nurse said. ‘Not that she did that, she just walked out.'

‘Maybe she had family that took her in?'

The nurse shook her head. ‘Don't know that she had any family. No one came to visit her and she told the nurses that she lived alone.'

Kate felt a wave of pity for this woman but didn't  understand why she cared about someone she  didn't know. She couldn't understand either that once she had left the hospital, and had unaccustomed time on her hands, thoughts of Helen Logue would keep niggling at her. A number of times she almost discussed it with Sally, but she always stopped herself and she
didn't know why that was either. She had never considered herself a secretive person.

However, the woman had disappeared into thin air and so she thanked the nurse and left the hospital. Once outside, though, she was loath to go straight home, as the early August day was fine and sunny. She decided to walk over to the Taylors' hostel, show them she was still in the land of the living and thank them, particularly John, for what he had done the night she had been injured. But first she went to Freer Road to see that the whole area had been laid waste by the bombs and resultant fires.

The Taylors were delighted to see her looking so well and they reminisced about that night over a cup of tea. ‘They made a right mess of Freer Road,' Kate said. ‘Where have all the people been taken that lived there?'

‘Oh, them as weren't injured and haven't got folks to move in with were taken to the Sacred Heart school hall, just off Trinity Road there,' John said. ‘It was the nearest, and the school is empty now, of course, with the kids all on holiday.'

‘Yeah, but they can't stay there for ever.'

‘I know,' Rita said, ‘and we can't take many more. We have almost reached our quota and I think most hostels are the same.'

‘Near enough, I'd say,' John said in agreement. ‘Have to twist people's arms to get them to take some of the bombed-out people into their homes.'

‘Huh, I've done a bit of arm-twisting too in my time,' Kate said, but she suddenly felt incredibly guilty because she had a spare bedroom in her house. Surely it was wrong to have a bedroom doing nothing with so many
in need. And this is what she said now to John and Rita. And they agreed that if people could help then they should, and without delay, so she thanked them for the tea and left.

She soon found the school and, as she approached it, she wondered if she should talk it over with Sally first before taking a perfect stranger to live in their house, but really there was nothing to talk about. The only stipulation she would make was that she wouldn't have a man, not with two young women in the house, but most of those bombed out were women anyway.

When she went into the entrance hall, she thought that if Helen Logue had returned to the area where her house had been – and where else would she have gone? – she could easily be there, camping out in the main school hall with all the rest, because she could hardly live on the streets.

So when the volunteer assistant approached Kate and asked if she could help her, Kate said she was looking for a lady who had been in hospital with her as they had both been injured in the bombing and her name was Helen Logue. The volunteer consulted a register and told Kate she was there, and Kate's stomach suddenly tied into knots. She wondered if she really wanted to meet this woman who had run away when a nurse had mentioned their likeness, though as she had said to the nurse her flight couldn't have anything to do with that and yet …

‘Would you like to see the lady?' the volunteer asked.

Kate knew that if she refused she would always wonder. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘Yes, please.'

Moments later, Kate was facing Helen Logue, who
was looking at Kate with a face drained of all colour, a trembling bottom lip and beautiful eyes full of pain and brimming with tears. She gave a sudden sigh and said, ‘Hallo, Kate.'

Kate felt apprehension tighten in the pit of her stomach as she demanded, ‘How do you know my name?'

‘I asked at the hospital,' Helen said. ‘Your name is Kate Burton and you were born Katherine Munroe, am I right?'

Kate nodded, more confused than ever. ‘And you lived on a farm near Donegal Town in Ireland.'

Unease flowed all through Kate. Who was this woman, this stranger, who seemed to know all about her? ‘Just who are you?' she demanded.

The woman didn't answer. Instead, she said, ‘I guessed you might try to find me and hoped that you wouldn't succeed. But with no money, possessions or home, I couldn't hide very effectively.'

‘Why did you need to hide?'

‘I have much to tell you,' Helen said. ‘But not here.'

Kate nodded, as the hall was filled with people: noise, chattering, laughing, even arguing people. Giggling children ran away from their mothers' restraining arms and crying babies demanded attention. ‘Where then?'

‘I don't know,' Helen said helplessly. ‘I have very little money for a café or anything.'

‘We don't need a café,' Kate said. ‘And there would be people there too. I have a funny feeling that I'm not going to like what you are going to say and I would prefer it if we were alone.'

‘So would I.'

‘Well, then,' Kate said. ‘Apart from here, the rest of the school is empty. Surely there's a classroom we can use if we say that we have some private business to discuss.'

Kate was right; the volunteers opened one of the classrooms for them. It smelt of chalk dust and the chairs stored up on the tables were far too small but, apart from the teacher's big leather one, that was all there was. Helen lifted two down, sat on one herself and indicated for Kate to use the other. Kate did so, squeezing herself into the small, hard, uncomfortable chair. ‘Go on then,' she urged, although part of her wondered if she wanted to hear what this stranger was going to say.

And Helen seemed reluctant to start. She twisted her hands on her lap and licked her lips and Kate noticed her eyes were so very bright as she suddenly shot up from the small chair and paced around the room. ‘I don't really know where to start.'

‘Well, do you know why we look so alike for a start?' Kate asked, and Helen nodded and faced Kate. ‘Yes, I know why.'

‘I mean, they thought you were my mother.'

‘I know,' Helen said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. Then she cried, ‘And, oh God, Kate, they were right. I
am
your mother.'

Kate jumped from the chair and stared at Helen, her eyes wide with puzzlement and disbelief. ‘What are you on about? What rubbish is this?'

‘It's true, Kate,' Helen said. ‘Philomena is your aunt and my sister.'

‘What?' Kate cried in distress. She didn't want what
this woman had said to her to be true and yet she knew by the look in her eyes that it was. She felt as if her world, her secure and safe world, had slid from under her and left her without any base. She said in a voice brittle with the pain of rejection, ‘So you gave birth to me and then just gave me away?'

‘No, it wasn't like that.'

‘What way was it?' Kate demanded. ‘So, you're telling me that all of my life so far has been based on lies?'

Helen took hold of one of the hands that Kate was wringing together. She resisted at first, but Helen held tight. She gave Kate's hands a little shake and said, ‘Look at me, Kate.'

Kate lifted her head and stared at the woman claiming to be her mother, her mouth an angry and mutinous line. ‘I will tell you all,' Helen said. ‘And you can ask me any questions you like. And when I am done, if you want nothing more to do with me, I will understand and I will bow out of your life again.'

‘Who was my father?' Kate demanded.

‘Your father was a man known as Peter Donahue and he was a fine, brave man and one who had enlisted as a soldier to fight in the Great War.'

Memories stirred in Kate's brain and she said, ‘You are the one called Ellie, Mammy's younger sister. I suppose I should call the woman who brought me up Aunt Philomena, but that doesn't sit well on me.'

‘And why would it after all this time?' Helen said. ‘Call her Mammy. I won't mind, I have no right to mind. So she talked about me then?'

‘Sometimes,' Kate said. ‘Not that much.'

‘What else did she say?'

‘That you travelled to England with the family you were in service with.'

‘That's right,' Helen said. ‘Our parents and two brothers and a sister had died with cholera in the spring of 1912 and we had to vacate the cottage so the landlord could put another family in it. Philomena had been walking out with Jim and it was decided to push their marriage forward. After it she went to live in the farmhouse with his parents and his brothers, Padraic and Michael.

‘There was no space for me and, as I had left school, the priest found me a job in service with the Mountford family. They were devout Catholics but, as their house was just outside Derry, I couldn't come home on my time off because it was too far.'