Love Me Tender

‘Cinema, she says, or dancing. I’m sure she’s meeting boys. Your da would go mad if he thought that.’

‘You can’t stop her, Mammy, they’re probably all the same, you know, just having fun.’

‘She says they are, and the other mothers aren’t always giving out to them,’ Mary said wearily, and gave a sigh. ‘She often sneaks away when I go round to Rose’s to give her a hand with the weans. Eamonn caught her smoking a cigarette the other day and she wasn’t even ashamed. She said they all did on the line and what was the harm. She had a packet of ten Woodbines half gone and she had the nerve to offer her dad one.’

Kathy had to laugh at the sheer cheek of it. ‘Did he take it?’ she asked, and Mary pushed at her and shook her head as she said, ‘You’re as much help as our Maggie. She tells me to stop giving out or I’ll make her worse, but God, Kathy, the place is full of soldiers. What if she has a lad?’

‘What if she has?’

‘You know your da and you can say that?’ Mary said. ‘Dear God, if he caught her arm-in-arm with some soldier out for all he could get, he’d take his belt off to her.’

‘Mammy, she has to sometime,’ Kathy said. ‘She’s not a little girl any more. She’s mixing with older women, it’s bound to have an effect, but in the long run it will do no harm.’

‘You don’t think she’ll get herself into trouble?’

‘Why should she?’ Kathy said, and pushed away the revelations Maggie had made about sleeping with Con before they were married. They’d been older than Carmel and wanted to marry; this was entirely different. ‘She’ll be all right, Mammy,’ she told Mary confidently. ‘She’s a good girl and she knows right from wrong.’

‘Humph,’ said Mary, ‘I just hope you’re right,’ and Kathy hoped she was too.

It was almost the end of the men’s week’s leave and Lizzie’s birthday had been and gone days before, but her very best present of all was hearing that her dad had been transferred to the General Hospital in Birmingham. Her mam had been to see him often, but alone, because children weren’t usually allowed in the wards. But Mammy had worked something of a miracle with the nursing staff, because they allowed Lizzie to visit her daddy once in the hospital, together with her mammy and her uncles.

The rules said only two visitors to a bed, but the Sullivan clan disregarded the rule, as no one was about to enforce it, and clustered around the bed. Con, Sean and Michael ribbed Barry, mercilessly.

‘Nothing much wrong with him that I can see,’ Sean said.

‘Not a thing,’ agreed Con.

‘Amazing what a man will do to get out of fighting,’ Michael put in.

‘Be quiet, you lot,’ Kathy said, though she was glad to see Barry cheered up. He needed something to take his mind off the terrible events in Dunkirk. ‘Shut up now or we’ll be thrown out.’

Soon they were anyway, for the nurse came back and hustled the three men out into the corridor, and then there was just Lizzie and Kathy beside Barry’s bed, and Lizzie’s eyes were shining in her head.

‘Have you a kiss for your daddy now you’re a big girl of nine years old?’ Barry asked.

‘Daddy!’ Lizzie cried, and threw her arms around her father’s neck.

‘Here, here, you’re not crying, are you?’

‘No,’ Lizzie said untruthfully, scrubbing at her eyes.

‘I should think not,’ Barry said in mock severity, and then his voice dropped and with a sad expression on his face he said, ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t get out to get you a present.’

‘I don’t care, Daddy. I just want you better.’

‘Mind you,’ Barry said with a wink at Kathy, who was in on the joke, ‘I might have some old thing lying around.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Daddy.’

‘No, no, let me see now,’ Barry said, and reaching over to his locker he withdrew a rag doll so beautiful that Lizzie’s eyes nearly popped out. She had golden plaits sewn to the top of her head, her eyes were the most brilliant blue and her mouth was rosy red, with two crimson cheeks as well. She wore a dress of plum velvet trimmed with lace at the cuffs and the hem, which nearly reached the top of her soft black leather boots.

‘Oh, Daddy, oh, she’s beautiful, thank you, thank you.’

‘It’s OK, princess, cheap at the price,’ Barry said, winking at Kathy again. ‘Three packets of fags and half a pound of bull’s-eyes.’

Kathy had been told about the present in a letter Barry had sent her just after her visit to Plymouth, in which he explained about the dolls made by a relative of Sister Hopkins. ‘Where does she get the clothes from, and the material?’ Kathy asked, fingering the plush velvet.

‘Odds and ends, I think,’ Barry said. ‘I know she buys very little, and she sends the fags and sweets overseas to men who have no doting wives to make their lives more bearable.’

‘Some odds and ends,’ said Kathy incredulously. ‘She must have rich connections.’

‘Anyway, it’s for you now, Lizzie,’ Barry said. ‘Something to remember your daddy by when you go off to the country.’

Lizzie stared at her father, not sure if she’d heard right. She remembered the children going to the country nine months ago, and nothing had happened. No bombs had fallen, and all the children who’d been evacuated had come back. Most of them had been glad to return. Lizzie didn’t want to go to any country, it sounded awful. Maura had said as much.

Beside her, she knew her mother was angry, bristling with it. She saw her open her mouth to speak, but Barry forestalled her by adding, ‘Surely your mammy has told you about it?’

Before Lizzie had time to speak, Kathy burst out, ‘Stop it, Barry, you have no right.’

‘No right,’ Barry exploded. ‘She’s my bloody child too, her and Danny, and I want them safe. Is that so wrong? I think I have a perfect right.’

‘Not to spring it on us, on Lizzie, like this.’

‘You told Chris Barraclough?’

‘I told him I’d think about it.’

‘Well?’

‘I’m still thinking about it.’

‘Well, I hope you’re still able to think when you’re buried under a landmine,’ Barry snapped.

‘Barry!’ Kathy was shocked, and Barry, catching sight of the faces of his wife and daughter, was ashamed of his outburst. ‘You’re upsetting the child,’ Kathy said, and Barry could not deny it, because tears were squeezing out of Lizzie’s eyes and dribbling down her cheeks. But she wasn’t upset about what her daddy had said about bombs; it was her mammy and daddy arguing that she didn’t like.

‘I’m sorry,’ Barry said. ‘Don’t mind me, Lizzie. I get fed up waiting around for my head and stomach to heal, so I can get out of here.’

Kathy, glad to change the subject, said, ‘Have they given you any idea?’

‘Next couple of days they said last time I asked,’ Barry said. ‘I’ll have to go back in for physio on the arm, but I’ll be home for a while.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ Kathy said. ‘It would be great, so it would.’

‘Then I’ll have to see what I can do,’ Barry said with a smile. ‘Now, about that other business…’

‘Leave it till you get home,’ Kathy said. ‘Then we’ll talk, promise.’ She kissed him on the cheek and added, ‘We’d better be on our way and let the other hooligans in before they wreck the hospital.’

Barry knew she was anxious to get away and was sorry he’d soured Lizzie’s visit, but he said nothing. He’d be home soon, and then he’d make Kathy see sense.

On 22 June, France finally surrendered. The so-called impregnable Maginot Line had provided little opposition to the seemingly unstoppable German army. People were only too well aware that just a small stretch of water separated Britain from the Nazi-dominated Europe. Defeat seemed probable, invasion imminent. The government realised the seriousness of the situation and mustered the Home Guard, and an information sheet went out to all householders entitled ‘If the Invader Comes’. People were encouraged to disable cars not in use, and hide maps and so on to confuse enemy spies, who many were sure were behind every lamp post.

Barry was due home the next day, and he was still there two days later when the first bombs fell in West Bromwich. ‘You see,’ he cried to Kathy as they clustered around the wireless. ‘That will happen here.’

‘No,’ Kathy snapped back. ‘It might not, but what will happen is invasion, everyone says so, and if we’re going to be invaded, my children stay here with me.’

Barry slammed out of the house angrily. There was no budging Kathy. He’d been working on her ever since he came out of the hospital, but she wouldn’t agree to the children being evacuated. He might have stood a chance if the children had been for it, but they weren’t. Lizzie, in particular, was dead against going anywhere in the country.

Barry was an impatient man anyway; his arm wasn’t healing as quickly as he’d hoped and he was missing his mates. Only the other day, Kathy, hurt by his attitude, had cried, ‘You can’t wait to get back, can you?’

And he’d replied, ‘No, I can’t, out of the bleeding road. You live your life quite well without me.’

The point was, Kathy had lived her life without Barry because she’d had to do it, and she had responsibilities to the family she couldn’t just drop. Much worse for Barry was Bridie, who never seemed to be away from the house for five minutes, and who went on and on about Pat and how she missed him, as if Barry didn’t feel bad enough already. He was uncomfortably aware that had he and Pat stayed where they were and surrendered, they might both have survived. As it was, he was alive and Pat wasn’t, and even the fact that Con had told him he’d heard the SS had taken few prisoners but gunned down many who’d surrendered only made him feel moderately better – and guilt made him lash out, even at the children.

Also, Kathy was easily tired and heavily pregnant, and though she lay beside him in bed every night, he could hardly take her in his arms and love her as he wanted – he wasn’t that selfish. But God, it didn’t help his frustration. He knew that Kathy was worried he would want to make love, so she was nervous even as she enjoyed his kisses and closeness, and that made him crosser than ever with her. Did she think he was some sort of animal with no self-control? All in all, the visit was not the happy time Kathy, Barry and the children had expected it to be.

At his mother’s he was hailed as a conquering hero. She was coming to terms with the death of her two sons and was aware that Hitler had still to be beaten or they would have died in vain. But for now Barry, her eldest and favourite son, was home, and it was a pleasure to fuss over him. Barry enjoyed the spoiling and cosseting and couldn’t help comparing it with Kathy’s attitude. She had always to give Rose a hand, or mind her weans, or sit with Bridie a while, or pop to her mother’s. Everyone had a higher priority in Kathy’s life than her husband, Barry thought, and he was bloody sick and tired of it.

Kathy herself was often bone weary, and yet she tried to help her family as she’d always done and keep a demanding husband happy. It was exhausting for her, and an additional worry was Barry’s appetite. It had always been healthy, but now boredom and inactivity – which had never sat easily on Barry’s shoulders – caused him to eat more. Meat rationing had been introduced in March, and early July found tea rationed to two ounces per person. The allowance of fats had changed too, and now each person was allowed two ounces of cooking fat and four of margarine but only two butter. Barry, being a serving soldier, had had none of these restrictions on his food and found it irksome when he couldn’t have a cup of tea whenever he wanted. Even the foods not yet rationed, like eggs and cheese, were in short supply, and luxury foods like biscuits and cakes were very hard to get hold of at all. Barry refused to acknowledge how difficult it was for Kathy to prepare nourishing meals every day. He accused her of moaning and complaining all the rime, and Lizzie and Danny often heard their parents arguing.

Eventually Barry talked the doctor into signing him off before he was fully fit. Kathy watched him go with a mixture of feelings, including relief, because although she would worry about him away fighting, he’d been difficult to live with, like a bear with a sore head, and she knew life would be more peaceful once he was gone.

As for Lizzie, though she was sorry to see her daddy leave again, she hadn’t understood what had made him so cross and scratchy, even with her and Danny. She was almost ashamed that she felt relief to match her mother’s as she watched him walk away, his kit bag on his shoulder.

But she was glad, after Barry left, that she had the doll, the last present her daddy had bought her. She called her Daisy, not for any reason she could think of except that she looked like a Daisy. Every night she cuddled her tight and told her all her worries and fears, and imagined she was talking to her daddy about it all.

She had a big problem of her own at this time, for her mammy had told her to be nice to Sheelagh. ‘She’s lost her daddy,’ Mammy had said. ‘He isn’t ever coming back. She’ll never see him again; think how awful that would be if it was your daddy.’

Lizzie did, but not for long; it was too terrible a thought to hold in her mind. Sheelagh was hard to be nice to, but she told herself she’d try.

The Saturday after Barry left, Bridie and Kathy sent the two girls outside out of the way, while they talked. Lizzie sat down on the step beside her cousin and watched Danny and Matt, who were playing marbles with a crowd of other young boys further up the street. It was hot and dusty, and Lizzie felt sticky with it, and though both girls had their skipping ropes with them, it was far too warm to skip. Lizzie felt uncomfortable with her cousin because she’d said nothing to her yet about Uncle Pat’s death, and so eventually she said, ‘I’m sorry about your daddy.’

‘No you ain’t.’

Whatever Lizzie had expected Sheelagh to say, it wasn’t those words that she spat out so bitterly. ‘Course I am,’ she said. ‘Everyone is.’

‘No you ain’t. No one cares, and my mammy knows it.’

‘How can you say that? I loved my Uncle Pat,’ Lizzie declared. ‘And my daddy did. Everyone did.’

‘Then why didn’t they look after him?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘They were supposed to look out for one another. That’s what they said when they joined up,’ Sheelagh said.

Lizzie remembered it, but she didn’t know if you could always do that in battles. She knew that lots of others had been killed at Dunkirk as well as her Uncle Pat, and she said so to Sheelagh. ‘My daddy said it was such a mess at Dunkirk, it was a wonder anyone got out alive.’

‘But he did though, didn’t he?’ Sheelagh snapped. ‘And all the others did. Only my daddy was killed, and that wouldn’t have happened if they’d all looked after each other.’

Lizzie was puzzled, unsure of how to argue that point with her cousin. While she was still thinking of a reply, Sheelagh said, ‘Anyway, my mammy said it won’t matter soon. We’re going to lose the war.’

‘No we’re not.’

‘Yes we are. You don’t know anything, you’re only a baby.’

‘I am not.’

‘Oh yes you are, and everyone knows we’re losing,’ Sheelagh said. ‘There’ll be an invasion and we’ll be overrun with Germans, then you’ll see.’

Lizzie didn’t ask what she’d see; she was too frightened by what Sheelagh had said.

‘Then you’ll be sorry,’ Sheelagh went on, ‘’cos do you know what they do to the men in the countries they rule?’

‘No,’ said Lizzie in a scared little voice.

‘They shoot them,’ Sheelagh said in grim satisfaction. ‘They stand them against the wall and shoot them, and then you won’t have a daddy either.’

Lizzie gasped in horror. ‘It’s not true,’ she said. ‘It isn’t. They don’t do that.’

‘Yes they do,’ Sheelagh said, delighted she’d managed to terrify her cousin. ‘They’ve done it already in France, and my mammy told me they do it everywhere.’

‘But they won’t invade us, our air force will stop them,’ Lizzie burst in.

‘They won’t be able to do anything,’ Sheelagh said dismissively.

Both girls knew the war was going badly; everyone knew. It was all that was talked about and it made the adults bad-tempered. Since the evacuation of Dunkirk, the Luftwaffe had been making sporadic raids on coastal towns in an effort to smash their defences and destroy ships, and everyone knew that was just the beginning. Invasion was the word on everyone’s lips. ‘Do you think we’ll be invaded, Mammy?’ Lizzie asked her mother later, desperate for reassurance after her cousin’s revelations.

Kathy sighed. ‘I don’t know, pet. I hope not.’

It wasn’t what Lizzie wanted to hear. ‘We’re not going to lose the war, are we?’ she asked desperately.

‘It’s in God’s hands, pet,’ Kathy said. ‘We must pray about it.’

Lizzie didn’t want it to be just in God’s hands. She thought he’d made a bad enough fist of it already, and she didn’t understand about praying either. The priests and teachers urged them to pray for peace, but what sort of peace? The sort where Hitler did what he wanted, for she couldn’t see him just giving up, and especially now, when most people thought he was winning. She could pray for Britain to win the war, but they couldn’t do that without killing German people, and surely that was wrong too. Anyway, she thought, if God was everywhere, like the priests said, and if he knew everything, why did she have to pray at all? Her mother was no good, Lizzie realised. She was as scared of defeat as Lizzie herself.

The schools broke up and the Battle of Britain began in earnest, and Lizzie found she could go nowhere without having Sheelagh in tow.

‘Don’t be selfish,’ Kathy admonished when Lizzie complained. ‘Think of poor Sheelagh, who has no daddy.’

Lizzie did think of her, but she didn’t see how trailing after her would make her cousin get over her loss quicker. They’d never got on, and in the past Sheelagh had always tried to make Lizzie look small and scorn her ideas. Now she seemed to hold her almost personally responsible for her father’s death, and Lizzie found her constant verbal attacks hard to take. She didn’t bother complaining, for she knew it would get her nowhere. Grown-up decisions, she knew, often made little sense, but there was no point arguing with them.

But there was no skipping off now to play with Maura Mahon, for Kathy was firm. Sheelagh, she said, needed her cousin. Maura didn’t understand Lizzie’s sudden devotion to a girl she’d always professed to detest and so thought she was being huffy with her, and Lizzie could have been upset about it if she’d had time.

But the point was, her free time was limited, for her mammy and Aunt Rose and Aunt Maggie, all heavily pregnant, needed her to give a hand. And then there was Auntie Bridie at the door: could Lizzie go a message or help turn the mangle for her, or scrub the step or wash the pots? Poor wee Sheelagh wasn’t able to give her a hand at all, she was too upset, but Lizzie was a grand girl altogether and Bridie was sure she didn’t mind and she must be a fine help to her mother, and Lizzie was pig sick about the whole thing.

Rose’s pains started in the early hours of Friday morning, just five days after the beginning of the summer holidays. The first Lizzie and her mother knew of it was when Mary walked in the entry door just as they’d finished breakfast holding Nuala and Peter by the hand. ‘Has she started then?’ Kathy said.

‘This long while, and no sign yet,’ Mary said. ‘I’ve been over there half the night. We could do with you if you can come. Bella Amis is after fetching the doctor.’

‘The doctor?’ Kathy echoed, hardly able to believe it. Bella Amis was the midwife, and all most women needed. To have a doctor usually meant trouble. Lizzie’s eyes had opened wide in surprise and noticing them, Kathy, with a glance at Rose’s two bemused children, asked quietly, ‘Is she bad?’

‘Bad enough,’ Mary answered shortly. ‘I must get back. I wondered, could Lizzie mind the weans?’

‘Of course,’ Kathy said, answering for her daughter.

There was a click as the entry door opened again and Sheelagh slunk into the room. Lizzie’s heart sank.

‘And here’s Sheelagh to help you,’ Mary said, handing Lizzie a list, ration books and a purse. ‘You can fetch your aunt’s rations first, and I’ve put an extra sixpence in the purse so you can get a wee treat for yourself.’ She passed over the shopping bags to Lizzie and added, ‘When you’ve done that, take them out for the day. To the park or somewhere, to get them out of the way for now.’

‘Can I take them down the Bull Ring?’

‘Aye, that’s a good idea,’ Mary said. ‘Anywhere will do, and there’s plenty to see in the Bull Ring.’

As the door closed on the two women, Nuala began to cry and Peter’s eyes were very bright and shiny, and Lizzie realised they were both very frightened without knowing why. She bent down and put her arms around them. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said. ‘Soon you’ll have a wee baby brother or sister, and that’s nothing to cry over.’

The children looked at her in astonishment, and Lizzie realised they probably hadn’t even known their mother was expecting. She certainly didn’t look as though she was; whereas Lizzie’s own mother and her Aunt Maggie resembled a couple of huge whales, Rose hadn’t changed her shape that much at all. She thought they might have picked up something in the adults’ conversation, but it was obvious from their amazement at what she said that they hadn’t.

‘Baby?’ Nuala said, her tears forgotten.

‘A baby,’ Peter said. ‘Is Mammy having a baby?’

‘She surely is,’ Lizzie answered. ‘D’you want a wee boy or a wee girl?’

‘A boy,’ Peter said stoutly. ‘Girls are stupid.’ He glanced over at his sister and added, ‘Nuala’s stupid.’

‘No she isn’t,’ Lizzie said, but she laughed at the determined look on Peter’s face. ‘She’s just wee. You were much the same at her age.’

Peter looked as if he might dispute that, so before he was able to, Lizzie said, ‘Come on, let’s get the rations fetched and then we can have the rest of the day.’

She picked Nuala up to dump her in the pram that her grandma had left outside the door, and said to Sheelagh, ‘You coming?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Sheelagh said. ‘Shopping with weans is not my idea of fun, but I’ll go down to the Bull Ring with you later.’

‘Oh, please yourself,’ Lizzie said in exasperation.

She strapped Nuala in her pram and stuck her tongue out at Sheelagh before going off down the road.

Pickering’s grocery store lay one side of the O’Malley home, and Morcroft’s the other, and people went to whichever one they were registered at. As Rose was registered at Morcroft’s, that was where Lizzie went. There was a queue as always, Lizzie noticed. She parked Nuala’s pram outside and went in, holding Peter by the hand.

She saw Maura Mahon just in front of her and smiled at her, but Maura pretended not to see her, so she sidled up alongside. ‘Hello, Maura,’ she said.

‘Oh, hello,’ Maura said, and then, letting her eyes scan the shop, remarked sarcastically, ‘Sheelagh’s not with you?’

Lizzie flushed. ‘Don’t be like that. I told you how it is. My mammy makes me take her about with me.’

‘Well, where is she today, then?’

‘She wouldn’t come. I was sent to fetch Aunt Rose’s rations, but only to get the weans out of the way, ’cos my aunt’s started,’ Lizzie said. ‘After that I’m to take them down the Bull Ring, and you can bet our Sheelagh wants to come there.’

‘Oh, I’d love to go down the Bull Ring,’ Maura said. Maura, like Lizzie, often went down there with her mother, usually late on Saturday afternoon to catch the bargains in meat and vegetables, and it was always entertaining. Lately, though, Kathy had been too tired for the trek, so Lizzie herself hadn’t been for a few weeks. Suddenly a spirit of mischief seized her. Why shouldn’t she go now, just her and Maura? If she didn’t go back to the house, Sheelagh would never know.

‘Let’s go together,’ she said. ‘Now.’

‘Just us?’

‘And the weans,’ Lizzie said. ‘I must take them, but they’ll be no trouble.’