Love Me Tender

‘There was constant bombing and the Stukas screaming above us, raining down bullets. It was hell on earth, Kath,’ Barry said. ‘The bombs fell that thick and fast, you couldn’t think straight with the noise of them and the screaming and yelling all around. You’d see men fall into the craters from a bomb directly in front of you and then the next blast would cover them up. It was a massacre. I could see some blokes had pushed jeeps into the sea to make a sort of jetty. The destroyers were way out, not able to come in any nearer, and there were all these boats, not military things, yachts, cruisers. Kath, you’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘We heard on the news and read about it,’ Kathy said.

‘Aye, but nothing could describe the sight of those little pleasure cruisers shuttling between the jetty and the larger ships put out in deeper water,’ Barry said. ‘They were under constant fire and yet they just carried on as if they were on a pleasure trip. It was a bloody miracle. Me and Pat were starving hungry, thick with mud and dog tired, soaked to the skin and shaking with cold, but these little boats brought a smile even to my lips.

‘But I could see Pat was sinking fast and the blood was seeping through the bandaging I’d put on. Then people who’d stood on the jetty for hours for rescue, just as tired, scared and miserable as us, made way for Pat, seeing that he was injured. I put him into a dinghy that came alongside,’ Barry went on. ‘He wanted me along with him, but it was wounded first. Not yet, I said, I’ll see you later in good old Blighty.

‘“Hold you to it, mate,” Pat said, “we’ll have a pint together.”

‘I watched him sail away and saw them haul him onto the destroyer. I remember thinking how that must have hurt him, but now at least he had a chance; they’d have medical people on board and maybe he could get out of his wet things, and they’d certainly be able to find him something to eat. I wanted to cheer. And then I saw the Messerschmitts, flying in low. I started to scream, stupid really, but I wasn’t the only one. When the first bombs fell, I jumped in the water. Didn’t know really what I was hoping to do. There I was, thrashing about and getting nowhere. Then the grey foamy water closed over my head and I thought this is it, and then I felt hands clawing at me. Two blokes had lain full stretch across the jeeps to reach me, with others holding their legs to stop them toppling in. They were yelling, “Grab on, mate, Grab on,” and d’you know, Kath, I nearly didn’t bother, and then I thought of you and the weans and I reached out for their hands. God, it seemed to take hours. I was tired and so was every other bugger and I was weighed down by my clothes. People reached out and caught my tunic and pulled me up on to the jetty. I lay for a minute getting my breath back and spluttering and coughing. By the time I was able to look up again the ship was gone, blown to kingdom come and nothing to show for it but a few dead bodies and debris littering the water.

‘I was so stunned, I wasn’t ready for the Stukas that seemed to come from nowhere. That’s how I copped for all this,’ said Barry, touching the bandage on his head. ‘And they got my belly and nearly sheared my arm clean off. And you know the other sad thing, Kath? The two blokes that pulled me out of the water and were so concerned with me, they didn’t take cover themselves and both were killed beside me.’

‘Oh, Barry.’ Tears were raining down Kathy’s face and, she realised with shock, down her husband’s too.

‘You know what tortures me?’ Barry said brokenly. ‘I keep thinking that if we’d stayed where we were when Pat was first hit, the Germans would have picked us up. They’d have seen to Pat’s leg and chest and he’d be bloody alive by now, even if he was a prisoner.’

Kathy shook her head. ‘He couldn’t stand being locked up,’ she said, and then added, ‘I don’t suppose there was a chance Pat might have made it? I mean, he couldn’t have been in the water and been picked up by a boat somewhere?’

Barry shook his head. ‘Not a chance,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t only tired and starving like the rest of us, but badly wounded too, and very weak. He’d never have survived. They did look; two or three boats diverted and cruised around for a bit when the ship went down. Like I said, it was just dead bodies. I was out of it by then, with my arm near hanging off, and bleeding from my head and guts. I was on the next boat out, not that I knew much about it. Most of the time I was raving. We put in at Dover where they patched me up and sent me here as a non-urgent case. They were run off their feet down there, and you should have seen the poor buggers…’ Barry stopped and wiped at his eyes before saying, ‘Kath, Pat was the greatest mate I ever had, or am likely to have. There’ll never be another like him, but he’s gone and we’ve all got to accept it.’

Kathy wiped her own face with a small handkerchief she drew from her bag, then said, ‘What about Michael and the others?’

‘They were all alive when last I saw them,’ Barry said. ‘That’s all I know. The beaches were chaos, there was no chance of seeing anyone there.’

‘You really must leave now, Mrs O’Malley,’ said Sister Hopkins’ voice at Kathy’s elbow. Neither of them had heard her approach in her soft-soled shoes.

‘Not yet,’ protested Barry.

‘I’m sorry, Mr O’Malley, but your wife has been here some time and she shouldn’t really have got in at all.’

‘When will you come again?’ Barry cried.

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ Kathy said, eyeing the nurse. ‘I’ll not get back to Birmingham today with trains the way they are. I’ll look for somewhere to stay for tonight and, if Sister agrees, come and see you tomorrow before I go back.’

‘It’s most irregular, Mrs O’Malley,’ Sister Hopkins said again.

‘I know, but it will have to last Barry a long time,’ Kathy said.

‘And it will help me get better, Sister, honest,’ Barry put in. ‘Then I’ll be out of your hair altogether.’

Sister Hopkins pursed her lips and said to Kathy as she bent to kiss Barry goodbye, ‘You’ll have to work it out with the times of your trains, but the doctors are usually finished by ten o’clock.’

Just as Kathy was about to answer, the man in the next bed shouted, ‘Good on you, Sister. He’s a bleeding hero, Barry. Got to look after us heroes, they’ll need us all before this lot’s over.’

Kathy glanced at him. She saw there were seven other men besides Barry in the ward, but on her way in she hadn’t noticed any of them. She’d had eyes only for her husband. She saw all the men watching her now with interest. Sister Hopkins glanced sternly at the man who had spoken and said, ‘Really, Mr Stoddard, we look after everyone well here.’

Mr Stoddard looked not a bit abashed and instead winked at Kathy. She found herself smiling back at him. ‘Good-bye,’ she said, and there was a chorus of farewells from the other beds.

She stopped at the door to wave to Barry and the other men and hurried after Sister Hopkins. ‘Is there a café locally?’ Kathy asked the nurse, when they were out of earshot of the ward.

‘I believe you need a place to stay too,’ Sister Hopkins said. ‘I did hear you say that, didn’t I?’

‘Oh, aye, do you know of one?’ Kathy asked eagerly.

‘Mrs O’Malley, the town is heaving with soldiers. I think it would be very difficult to find a place tonight.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘And if you don’t mind me saying so, you look all in.’

‘I am rather tired. It’s the emotion and everything.’

‘I suggest, then, that you come home with me tonight.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t…’

‘You can hardly sleep on a park bench, my dear,’ Sister Hopkins said with a smile, and Kathy realised that behind the frosty exterior was a very kind woman. ‘I’m sure my sofa will be quite comfortable,’ she went on. ‘And though there are many cafés around, the nurse’s canteen is cheaper and I can take you in as a guest. I’m off duty at six, if you could just wait a while.’

‘Oh, aye, oh, thank you,’ Kathy cried.

The nurse went on: ‘There’s a reception area where you could sit. I’ll show you. Oh, and by the way, when we are away from the hospital, my name is Peggy.’

Oh, thought Kathy, how kind people were, and if only she could get over this feeling of sadness at the death of her beloved brother…She’d sort of faced it before she’d left home, but when he was said to be missing she’d felt there was always a chance that he’d be found. Now that chance was gone. She knew she’d never see Pat again, and that hurt. The way Barry had described the hell-hole of Dunkirk, it was amazing that anyone had got out of it alive, but Barry had, and she must latch on to that and hope that with God’s help, Sean, Michael and Con were all safe too.

She was surprised how much better she felt with a meal inside her, and while she ate she found herself telling Sister Hopkins about all her family. ‘They’ll be worried,’ she said. ‘Mammy and Daddy especially, and my little girl Lizzie.’

‘Can you phone?’

Kathy looked at the nurse in amazement. ‘We haven’t a phone,’ she said.

Sister Hopkins realised she’d made an error. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Has anyone else, a shop perhaps?’

‘Pickering’s have, I believe,’ Kathy said.

‘Are they far away?’

‘No, not far, and they’d pass on a message.’

‘Well then, there’s a phone in the hospital,’ Sister Hopkins said. ‘You can tell them you’re safe at least, and will be home tomorrow.’

‘I…I don’t know how to use a phone. I’ve never had to,’ Kathy confessed.

‘That’s all right. I’ll show you,’ said the nurse.

A short time later, Kathy found herself talking to Mrs Pickering, who owned the shop just up from the O’Malleys’. She shouted a bit, unable to believe that sound could travel from one instrument to another so effectively unless she bawled her head off, and though Mrs Pickering might have been rendered deaf in one ear for a time, she reassured Kathy and promised to pass the news on to her parents. Then Kathy went home with Peggy Hopkins and spent a very comfortable night on her sofa.

It was over breakfast that Kathy faced up to the fact that she hadn’t told Barry about the deaths of his brothers. There hadn’t been time the previous day, and anyway she’d hesitated to load him down with more sadness. She hoped he was feeling stronger this morning, for she’d have to talk to him.

When Kathy walked into the ward, the men greeted her as if they’d known her forever. ‘You did them a power of good yesterday, Mrs O’Malley,’ a young nurse told Kathy as she passed. ‘They all spruced themselves up this morning when they heard you were coming back. Some who hadn’t had a shave for a week were asking for razors this morning.’

Kathy laughed and said, ‘If they’d do that for someone my shape, they’d be standing on their heads for some of the young lasses in the town.’

‘They would that, and it’s a sight I wouldn’t like to miss.’

But the young nurse was right. Barry was propped up, looking far more cheerful, with his hair brushed and the stubble gone from his cheeks and chin. Kathy was delighted to see him looking so well and was pleased he seemed to be coming to terms with Pat’s death and accepting it for the tragic accident it was. She dredged up little incidents about the family, things she couldn’t remember writing in her letters, and funny things the weans had said, trying desperately to amuse him.

But Barry was no fool. He knew Kathy was holding something back and he only waited till she stopped to draw breath before saying, ‘What is it?’

Kathy was taken aback. ‘What’s what? Nothing. What do you mean?’ she stammered, confused.

Barry studied her, more sure than ever that she was hiding something. ‘How’s Ma?’ he said.

‘Great, so she is, great,’ Kathy said. ‘I go up a couple of times a week and she comes down sometimes…’ Her voice trailed away as she remembered the last time she’d seen Molly O’Malley, and at once Barry knew there was something wrong at home.

‘What is it, Kathy?’ he said. ‘I know something is bothering you, and if you don’t tell me, I’ll only worry when you’ve gone.’

He put out his good hand but Kathy pulled away and said, almost angrily, ‘Nothing I tell you. Your ma’s fine.’

‘My brothers then? Something’s damn well wrong,’ Barry burst out.

Kathy couldn’t prevent the shadow from passing over her face and Barry just asked, ‘Who?’

Kathy’s voice was barely above a whisper as she answered, ‘Phil and Donal.’

‘The two of them, dear Christ,’ Barry moaned, and after a slight pause asked, ‘Are they both…dead?’

Kathy just nodded, and Barry shut his eyes against the pain of it. Suddenly his hand shot out and grabbed Kathy’s. ‘Kath, I want you out of that place.’

‘What place?’

‘Birmingham.’

‘Don’t be daft, Barry.’

‘I’m not being daft. Pregnant women can be evacuated, with their children.’

‘I can’t just run away, Barry. What about your ma – she’s got to rely on me a lot now – and Bridie and Mammy and Daddy coming to terms with the loss of Pat? And what if Michael, Sean or Con are gone too, that will break Mammy’s heart altogether, not to mention Maggie and Rose. I can’t just go somewhere safe and pretend they’re nothing to me.’

Barry considered this and knew she had a point. ‘Well, the children then,’ he said.

Kathy made an impatient movement on the bed. ‘We’ve discussed this already,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t keen on the weans going to strangers and you agreed with me.’

‘Yes,’ Barry said, ‘I did, but…look, everyone knows Hitler is working towards invasion. However you look at it, Dunkirk was a defeat, and he’ll think we’re crushed and now is the time to attack the cities. Then, when we’re demoralised and depressed, as he thinks, he’ll invade.’

‘How d’you know all this?’

‘It stands to reason, Kath,’ Barry said.

‘But why Birmingham?’

‘Oh, use your loaf,’ Barry cried impatiently. ‘Birmingham is crucial to the war effort and is bound to be targeted.’

Kathy thought a little and knew that Barry had a point. Everyone was aware of Birmingham’s contribution to the war effort. There was the Vickers factory which made Spitfires then pushed them across the road to Castle Bromwich aerodrome to be flown south; and the BSA factory turning out military motorbikes and guns. Even Cadbury’s had drastically cut their production of chocolate, and much of the workforce was packing cordite into rockets, while Dunlop made most of the tyres for the planes and military vehicles, and the car factories were busy making tanks.

‘Hitler will want to flatten Birmingham,’ Barry said. ‘You must see that.’

‘I can see he’d want to, but we’re two hundred miles from the coast.’

‘And what d’you think that is in a plane?’ Barry demanded angrily.

‘We’ve got the cellar, we’ll be all right.’

‘Oh, fine,’ Barry said sarcastically. ‘That’s all right then. And who’s to see to our weans when you have the baby? Rose or Maggie, who’ll have their own hands full, or your ma, who’ll be run off her feet looking after you all? And what about when the weans are at school?’ Barry went on. ‘Or out playing in the streets somewhere, or down the park? Can you protect them then?’

‘I won’t send my weans to strangers,’ Kathy said stubbornly.

Barry sighed in exasperation and said, ‘Look, Kathy, the chap in the last bed goes by the name of Barraclough – Chris Barraclough. They’re monied people, or were, but their father died some years ago. There’s just Chris and a younger brother, David – he’s away at school – and the mother wants to do her bit and open her home up to people from the cities who may need to escape for a while. She had evacuees before, in nineteen thirty-nine, but they went back when no bombs fell.’

‘Very nice of her, I’m sure,’ Kathy put in sarcastically. ‘But to me, they’re still strangers.’

‘Talk to Chris, he can put it better than me.’

To humour Barry, Kathy went to find Chris Barraclough. He was due to be discharged in a day or so and was sitting in a wheelchair with a rug over his knees, reading the paper. Kathy was surprised at how young he was. He had an open, honest kind of face, one you could trust somehow. He was a handsome boy too, with regular features, a full mouth, a firm chin and deep-blue eyes with dark lashes. His hair, regulation short, was blond, but the Brylcreem made it look darker. At Kathy’s approach he put aside his paper and gave her such a beautiful smile, her heart flipped in surprise.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to ask who you are. Barry has a photograph of you; he’s shown it to everyone in the ward, I think. I feel as if I know you already, and may I say, Mrs O’Malley, the photograph does not do you justice.’

Kathy flushed, not used to gallantry and unable to deal with it. ‘Mr…Mr Barraclough,’ she stammered.

‘Oh, Chris, please,’ the young man said. ‘And may I call you Kathy?’

Kathy gave a shrug and a smile. ‘Everyone else does,’ she said.

‘Well then, so will I.’ He regarded the woman in front of him and thought her very beautiful, and Barry a lucky chap. Her pregnancy had lent a bloom to her skin, and her eyes were so large and dark brown you felt you could drown in them. It seemed criminal to him that war would be waged on such as the woman before him in all the industrial cities of Britain; judging by the atrocities in Poland, none were too young, old or infirm to experience Nazi brutality.

‘My mother has a house in a small village in Herefordshire,’ he began, when Kathy explained what she’d come to see him about. ‘It’s a rambling old place, far too big for Mother now she’s on her own, but she loves it. You would love it too, I know, even if only for a week or two. It has rolling hillsides dotted with sheep, forest land and the River Wye and its tributaries. It truly is idyllic, and once you’re there, you’ll forget there’s a war being waged anywhere.’ He smiled and went on. ‘I’m off myself soon for a week of pampering and spoiling from my dear mother before I report for active service again.’

‘And what makes you think your mother would welcome my weans?’ Kathy asked quite sharply.

‘She likes children,’ Chris said disarmingly. ‘Apparently she wanted a houseful, but my father was an officer in the Great War and was badly injured internally and externally. Over the years the old wounds gave him much trouble – in fact, I can never remember him as a fit, well man; he always seemed to be an invalid. He died when my young brother David was a year old.’

‘How old is your brother now?’

‘Thirteen,’ Chris said. ‘And I’m twenty. I went from boarding school to the army. Mother was a bit upset, she thought I’d go to university first – keep me safe, as it were – but I didn’t want to skulk at home, you know. Now she’s worried for David, who is keeping his fingers crossed that the war won’t be over before he’s through school.’

‘You say your mother wanted lots of children,’ Kathy said, ‘but both you and your brother went away to school. What can she know about having children around her all day?’

‘We didn’t go away till we were turned eleven,’ Chris explained. ‘David has only been boarding for just over two years, and unfortunately that coincided more or less with me joining up. Mother is so lonely now, though she seldom complains. All her life she’s longed for a daughter; she’d love yours.’

‘Maybe,’ Kathy said. ‘But I don’t like my children going to people I don’t know, however kind and well-off they are.’

‘Oh, but you will go with them, surely?’

‘No, I’ve explained to Barry,’ Kathy said. ‘There’s no way I can go.’

‘Then send your children before the bombs come,’ Chris pleaded. ‘I can vouch for their happiness there.’

‘No one can do that, Mr Barraclough,’ Kathy said, but she accepted the address that he scribbled down, and promised to think about it.

FIVE

Back home, the place was in uproar, and Kathy was delighted to hear that Sean, Michael and Con had been in touch. They were all safe and sound and would be home for a week’s leave as soon as they were allowed, but it was nearly ten days before they arrived. It was wonderful to have them back and they were all interested in hearing about Barry, but terribly upset about Pat being missing. Not wishing to depress them still further, Kathy kept from them Barry’s revelations about what had really happened to Pat and confided only in Mary. ‘Shall I tell Bridie, Mammy?’ she asked. ‘Do you think it will help her to know the truth?’

Mary shook her head. ‘It would serve no purpose,’ she said at last. ‘She’s coming to terms with it in her own way, leave it so.’

The men were amazed that so many had escaped the beaches, and said so. ‘We were badly equipped,’ Sean complained. ‘One bloody tin hat, rifle and bayonet was all we had to combat the German panzer division. Bloody ridiculous it was.’

‘And then we had the order to retreat to the beaches,’ Con put in. ‘And that was just madness too. No one knew what was what, or where to go, or any damn thing.’

‘That had us by the balls right enough,’ Michael said.

‘Michael,’ warned Mary automatically. Sean and Con were convulsed with laughter, and even Eamonn had a twinkle in his eye. Mary rounded on them all. ‘You’re no help, any of youse.’

‘Ma,’ said Sean, wiping his eyes, ‘don’t be giving out. Michael’s a man now and he’s earned the right to say what he likes.’

‘Begorra he has,’ Mary said, but she knew Sean was right. The adolescent Michael who’d joined up in a fever of patriotism had shed his youth’s skin and had stepped over into the man’s world. Sean had also changed, and Mary supposed that the experiences they’d lived through would have affected anyone. He also seemed very worried about Rose, as her pregnancy seemed to be taking it out of her. He knew she had a lot to do with the little ones.

‘I don’t think she’s that strong,’ Mary confided one day to Kathy. ‘And she’s so thin, you’d hardly know she was pregnant.’

It was true. While Kathy and Maggie had ballooned out and had little to fit them, Rose had seemed not to change shape much at all. She tried to put on a brave face for Sean, but the lines of strain were visible to everyone and Sean was not fooled. ‘I’m not wishing anything against Sean, mind,’ Mary said one day to Kathy, ‘but it would help if he was sent overseas for a wee while, give her time to get over this one before he’s at her again.’

‘Mammy!’

‘Well, I’m only saying what I’m thinking, and it doesn’t have to go any further.’

‘Well, I shan’t say anything, and I do feel sorry for Rose,’ Kathy said. ‘I’m also glad Maggie gave up at the factory at the beginning of Con’s leave. I was beginning to think she’d have her baby on the factory floor.’ She looked at her mother and said, ‘Daddy seems all right with Con now.’

‘Oh, sure, that’s your father. He thinks him a fine fellow of a man now, so he does. Sure, it’s Carmel we have the problems with these days.’

Kathy knew a little about that. Carmel was turned fourteen now and was working in Cadbury’s. She loved her workmates and her new-found freedom, and the money she’d never had before, and she had become pert and cheeky in Mary’s opinion. ‘You should see how she dresses up to go to the cinema or dancing with the other girls; the skirts are positively indecent,’ Mary said.

‘You know the government have said skirts must be above the knee now,’ Kathy reminded her, but with a smile.

Mary sniffed. ‘There’s above the knee and there’s well above the knee, and don’t think it’s patriotism that decides Carmel’s skirt length. They chop and change with their friends to have different outfits. I told her there will be clothes rationing soon and I don’t know what she’ll do then.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said she’d worry about it when it happens.’

‘She’s right in a way, Mammy. I mean, why worry before you have to?’

‘You don’t see her plastered to the eyeballs with make-up, with gravy browning on her legs to make them look like stockings, and trotting off on high heels.’

‘Where does she find to go?’