Hilda Walker was very correct, dressed impeccably in a dark-grey calf-length skirt, a white high-necked blouse and a rope of pearls. Her hair was precisely coiffured and her fingernails long and buffed to a shine. Julie tried hiding her hands in the folds of her skirt but had to bring one out to shake hands.
‘Do sit down, Miss Monday,’ Mrs Walker said.
Harry laughed and pulled Julie down on the sofa beside him. ‘Oh, Mum, this is Julie, not Miss Monday.’
‘Yes, I understand it is a made-up name.’
‘It’s the name I was registered with,’ Julie said. ‘No one knows my real name.’
‘It will soon be Walker,’ Harry put in. ‘And that will be real enough.’
Mrs Walker did not respond to that as her husband entered the room and Julie jumped up to be introduced to him. He was an older version of Harry, silver-haired, very upright and a little portly. His amber eyes were so like Harry’s she would have taken to him even if he had not been smiling a welcome. ‘I am glad to meet you at last,’ he said. ‘Do sit down again and tell us all about yourself.’
She obeyed hesitantly, but there wasn’t much to tell and she realised how feeble she sounded and her voice faded to a stop.
‘No doubt we will learn more as we go along,’ he said. ‘Harry tells me he has asked you to marry him.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But?’ Harry repeated in surprise. ‘You didn’t have any buts last week.’
She turned to him. ‘I know. I was bowled over and pleased as punch, but when I stopped to think—’
‘Stop that, this minute, Julie Monday,’ he interrupted, reaching for her hand. ‘I won’t listen. We love each other and we are both old enough to know our own minds. You can’t back out on me now, I won’t allow it. You do love me, don’t you?’
‘You know I do. How could I not? You’re Harry.’
‘Then it is a done deed. You are engaged to me. We are here to talk about wedding arrangements and where we’ll live afterwards. We can do that over tea.’
It was all going too fast for her and she played with her food and only half listened as dates and churches were suggested and decided upon and they moved on to discussing the reception. ‘I assume you have no one to arrange that for you,’ Mrs Walker said, still tight-lipped.
‘No. Do we need a reception?’
‘Of course we do. It will look odd if we don’t. If we are going to do it, we will do it properly. I’ll take over. We can hire a hotel room and they can do the catering. What about your wedding dress?’
That was too much for Julie. Her spirit returned. ‘I can provide my own wedding dress, thank you,’ she said.
This seemed to silence the lady, but not for long. She was soon talking about wedding cakes and flowers and whom to invite. Apart from Grace Paterson, Julie had no one to ask. Any friends she had had at the orphanage had gone their separate ways and none of the staff at Sir Bertram’s or those at the boarding house could be called friends.
‘Never mind,’ Mrs Walker said. ‘Some of our relations can sit on your side of the church.’
‘Can’t we go to a register office, then it won’t matter?’
‘No, certainly not, that’s ungodly. You must make your vows in church. They are more binding that way.’
‘I do not need vows to bind me to Harry. And wherever I make them, they will be kept, I promise you that.’ She had spoken sharply and felt Harry reach for her hand under the table and squeeze it.
‘And where will you live?’
‘I’ll find a house to rent,’ Harry said. ‘Not too far from Chalfont’s – Southwark, Bermondsey, Lambeth, somewhere like that.’
‘But they’re nothing but factories and slums,’ his mother said.
‘Not all. A lot of the old unfit houses have been pulled down and there are some decent ones there now. And we need to go carefully to start with, until I make my way up.’
‘I don’t know if you’ll do that at Chalfont’s. You are marrying one of Sir Bertram’s servants, after all.’
‘I am no longer one of his servants,’ Julie reminded them.
‘We know that.’ Again that repressive tightening of the lips.
‘It wasn’t Julie’s fault,’ Harry put in. ‘And my choice of wife has nothing to do with Sir Bertram.’
The tense meeting came to an end at last and Harry walked her home. ‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ he said.
‘It was awful. Harry, I can’t go through with all that, I really can’t. Your mother made it very clear you were marrying beneath you. And the sort of wedding she’s talking about will make that plain to all your friends and relations.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, sweetheart. Dad climbed his way up from being a delivery boy with a horse and cart and Mum was a shop assistant. We can do the same. I’ll make my way up in the world and you will be with me every step of the way. You have to believe that.’
‘I will, if we can be married quietly somewhere, just you and me and a couple of witnesses.’
‘They won’t like it.’
‘Then we won’t tell them until it’s over.’
‘I don’t think I can do that.’
‘Then you must love pomp and ceremony more than you love me.’
‘Oh, Julie, how can you say that? You’re not being fair.’
‘It’s you not being fair.’ They had reached her door and she stopped to turn and face him. ‘You don’t seem to understand.’
‘I’m trying.’
‘Try harder.’ She turned and let herself in the flat, leaving him staring at the green door with a number seven painted on its centre panel.
He walked away, deep in thought. Was Julie being unreasonable? Was his mother intent on humiliating her? He did not think so, but in Julie’s shoes he might. She was extremely sensitive about her origins, or lack of them, and putting her into a crowd of his relations and friends might make her feel put down. All he wanted to do was put her on a pedestal and tell the world how wonderful she was.
‘It’s all off,’ she told Grace. ‘They are snobs and I’m not good enough for their precious son.’
Grace put a cup of cocoa in front of her. ‘What happened?’
‘Harry was on their side,’ she said after she had told the tale. ‘I thought he would understand but he didn’t.’
‘He’ll be back.’
‘Not if his mother has her way.’
‘If she does, he’s not the man I thought he was and you’ve had a lucky escape.’
Julie gave her a rueful smile. It was strange to think how close they had become, the anonymous orphan and the spinster teacher. When she had been at Coram’s, Grace Paterson had not shown her any favouritism, quite the contrary, but when she had gone to her in trouble, she had turned out to be a brick. Besides giving her a home, Grace had taught her how to speak properly and how to behave in company. It wasn’t that which was her downfall, but the fact she had no past, no family – ‘breeding’, the upper classes called it.
‘The Walkers aren’t upper class, nowhere near it,’ Grace said when she voiced this thought. ‘Mrs Walker might aspire to be something she is not but that’s her problem, nothing for you to worry about. For all you know, you might be the daughter of an earl and can be amused by her pretentiousness.’
Julie laughed. ‘Oh, you have cheered me up.’
‘Good.’
Grace was right. Harry was outside the following evening when she left work to go home. He fell into step beside her. ‘I can’t bear to be at odds with you,’ he said. ‘So I told my parents we are going to be married in a register office with a handful of witnesses and have a meal in a hotel afterwards and that’s all.’
‘And did they agree?’
‘I didn’t give them the chance to agree or disagree. I said that’s what we were going to do. They have accepted it. Has that put your fears at rest?’ He stopped walking and twisted her round to face him. ‘So, will you marry me now?’
‘Yes, Harry. And I love you all the more for being so understanding.’
He kissed her, there in the street, to the wolf whistles of those passing by. He grinned back at them. ‘She’s going to marry me.’
‘Lucky dog!’
Harry found a house to rent in Bermondsey, after the previous occupants had decided to leave London for somewhere safer in the event of war. It was at the end of a terrace and had a patch of garden at the back, reached by a narrow alley which ran down the backs of all the houses. Downstairs there was a sitting room and a kitchen which contained a sink, a cold tap and a bath covered with a plywood top when it was not in use. Water was heated in a boiler beside the kitchen range. The lavatory was outside but at least it flushed. Upstairs were two bedrooms. Julie was thrilled with it.
Here was her very own home, one she could decorate and furnish just as she pleased. They bought kitchen equipment, a table and chairs, a three-piece suite, a bedroom suite and a few rugs for the floor, helped by Harry’s parents, because, as his mother said, ‘I don’t want my son to have to live in squalor.’ Julie would have liked to refuse the largesse but she was realist enough to know that would be cutting off her nose to spite her face and hurt Harry. She would do nothing to hurt him, however much it dented her pride. She borrowed Miss Paterson’s sewing machine and made curtains and runners and cushion covers and then set about making her wedding dress.
There was some consternation when it was discovered that, as she was not yet twenty-one, she needed parental permission to marry. Grace Paterson saved the day by asking the governor of the orphanage to sign as her guardian. For Harry’s sake she relented over the register office wedding and they were married in church in March 1938, witnessed by Harry’s parents, his brother, his sister and brother-in-law and Grace Paterson. It was the first time Julie had met Roland and Mildred. Roland, who arrived in the uniform of a pilot officer, was like his brother in looks and gestures. Mildred was a younger and prettier version of her mother and heavily pregnant with her first child. Her husband, Ian Graham-Mellcott, was several years older than Millie, tall and thin and descended from some titled family, which Mrs Walker took great pains in informing Julie when they were introduced, though the man himself made little of it.
The simple ceremony was intensely moving and Julie, standing beside Harry in her white taffeta dress and a little headdress of orange blossom and lace, was glad she had changed her mind about a church service. Saying her vows before an altar made the day more special, if that were possible. The three-course meal they had in the hotel afterwards was no grander than the everyday luncheon at the Chalfonts’ mansion, but everyone was jolly and smiling and toasted the newly married couple in sparkling wine.
Afterwards, glowing with happiness, Harry and Julie took a train to Southend. It was here they had met and it held special memories for both of them. The seaside holiday had grown in popularity in the intervening years, but it was essentially the same. The donkeys still plodded up and down with children on their backs, Punch still beat Judy about the head, children still paddled, built sandcastles, played bat and ball and poked about in rock pools for living creatures. Harry had booked them into the boarding house that his family had always frequented and here they spent the first night of married life.
They were both virgins, but Harry had a little more idea of what was expected of him than Julie had. They undressed shyly and scrambled into bed and lay there in each other’s arms. He put his arm beneath her shoulders and pulled her round so that he could kiss her. He was gentle, she was responsive, and then nature and instinct took over and their marriage was consummated in the most joyful satisfying way. Exhausted and happy, they slept.
The week flew by – they paddled and swam and walked along the beach, skimming pebbles; they strolled along the pier and tried out the slot machines with pennies; they played bowls on the green, went to the theatre and the cinema, and at night they made love, discovering new pleasures along the way. It seemed nothing and no one could spoil their delight in each other. And the following Saturday they went home, taking with them a garden gnome which had taken Julie’s fancy because of his round red cheeks and beaming smile. ‘He’s one of Snow White’s dwarves,’ she told Harry, hanging onto his arm. ‘He’s Happy. Just like me.’ He had bought it for her and found a spot for it in the garden and they settled down to married life in their new home. It would have been idyllic if the fear of war had not been hanging over everyone.
Harry went to work at the factory every day, working twelve-hour shifts. Radios were needed for the new aircraft coming off the production line, for communications in the army and navy, and for the ordinary household who needed the wireless to listen to the BBC and keep abreast of the news. The Great Depression of earlier in the decade was put behind them as the populace found employment in the preparations for war.
‘Too little, too late,’ Donald Walker said gloomily as he stood beside his son’s workbench one day in October. Everyone in the factory was working flat out and most were doing overtime every evening. ‘We should have been doing this years ago.’
Hitler had annexed Austria earlier in the year with hardly a murmur of dissent and now his attention was turning to Czechoslovakia, a country created by the Versailles Treaty after the Great War and which contained, in Sudetenland, three million German-speaking people. In an effort to avoid war Neville Chamberlain had flown to Munich to meet Hitler and come back with a document they had both signed. It was not a treaty but an agreement not to go to war so long as Germany was allowed to take over Sudetenland. The whole country gave a huge sigh of relief, but it did not stop the preparations. Only the foolhardy believed it meant peace was assured.
‘I think you had better get that wife of yours out of London,’ Donald added. ‘We’re right on the docks here and a prime target for the bombers.’
‘I’ve told her all that, but she won’t have it. She won’t leave me and she won’t leave her home, especially after Mr Chamberlain came back from Germany waving that scrap of paper and saying it meant peace in our time.’
‘Do you believe that?’ his father asked him.
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t, but Julie has been brought up to believe implicitly whatever those in authority tell her and she is convinced there will be no war. I don’t want to worry her by shattering her faith, especially now.’
‘She ought to have more faith in you, if only for the baby’s sake.’
Julie, like many another, chose to put her head in the sand and get on with her life, a life entirely wrapped up in Harry, her cosy little home and her coming baby, which was due in December, nine months after their idyllic honeymoon. She could not have been happier and she did not want to hear talk of war.
George Harold Walker was born on 7th December 1938 weighing just over seven pounds. Because Julie was so small it was a difficult birth and she was in labour a whole day and night, while the midwife sat and knitted and Harry paced the living room, drinking endless cups of tea. When the little one finally arrived, Julie forgot all that in her delight. He was perfect in every way and, according to both Julie and Hilda Walker, who arrived within hours, was the image of his father. He certainly had Harry’s amber eyes, though Julie’s very fair hair. It was an unusual colour combination which, so his mother said, meant he was going to be a very unusual man.
Harry doted on him. He watched Julie breastfeed him with a grin on his face and his eyes shining. He even learnt to change the baby’s nappy and would sing him to sleep if he was at home at his bedtime. Their lives revolved around George and neither wanted to think of anything else, certainly not the clouds gathering on the horizon as 1938 became 1939.
The trouble was that they could not avoid it because the subject was on everyone’s lips. There were those who, like Julie, believed war had been averted, and those who were convinced it had only been postponed.
‘It will come, you see,’ Mrs Golding said. She and her husband were their next-door neighbours and had come to England from Austria ten years before and considered themselves English. Even so, they were hugely unpopular in the neighbourhood because of their origins and the fact that they were Jewish. Julie, who knew what it was like to be an outcast, felt sorry for them and always spoke to Mrs Golding when they were both in their back gardens hanging out washing, or met in the queue at the grocer’s.
‘The bombers will come,’ Mrs Golding said, as they both took advantage of a good blow to hang out sheets. ‘They’re building shelters in the Old Kent Road. I saw piles of bricks and men mixing cement and they told me that was what they were doing. And the council is offering everyone a shelter for their garden.’
‘I haven’t heard anything about garden shelters.’
She asked Harry about them when he arrived home. ‘Mrs Golding says the council are issuing everyone who wants one with an air-raid shelter,’ she said, dishing up his evening meal. He was very late home and she had been keeping it hot over a pan of boiling water. ‘Is that true?’ ‘Anderson shelters – yes, I believe so.’
‘Why? The prime minister said there would be no war.’
‘He’s playing for time.’
‘Oh, no, Harry, surely not? Hitler got his way over Sudetenland, what more does he want?’ Like many another she had never heard of Sudetenland until it filled the front pages of the newspapers.
‘The whole world,’ he said, attacking his food while she sat at the table opposite him watching him eat. She loved cooking for him and he always appreciated her efforts, but it was a pity she never knew what time he was coming home so that she did not have to keep it hot, letting it spoil. He never complained. Nor did he complain when the week’s housekeeping money ran out before the end of the week. ‘I’m not used to managing money,’ she said when she had to ask for more. ‘When you give it to me I think it will last easily and then it seems to disappear all of a sudden. I don’t know why.’
‘You must learn to budget, sweetheart. We mustn’t get into debt.’
So he sat down and went over what she spent the money on and it was usually something frivolous for George, like a new toy because she saw it in the shop window and thought he would like it, or a treat for Harry’s tea, so that when it came to buying the basics, she found herself short. ‘Let’s get some jars and put some in each for the essentials, like rent and groceries and insurance, and when they are all paid for, you can spend the rest on whatever you like. But don’t dig into the jars unless it’s a real emergency.’
‘I’m stupid, aren’t I?’
‘No, of course you’re not stupid,’ he said, giving her a hug. ‘It’s just that you never had to handle money in the orphanage, did you? And when you were in service your board and lodging was found and your wages were your own to spend as you liked. Don’t worry about it, I’m sure you will soon learn.’
‘You are so patient with me.’
‘Why wouldn’t I be? I love you.’
‘And I love you, more than I can possibly explain. You and George are my whole world. I don’t want it ever to change.’
‘Unfortunately, my darling, times are changing. We can’t avoid that.’
‘War, you mean.’
‘Yes, war.’
‘Oh, Harry, what have we done to deserve it?’
‘We won the last war, that’s what, and we made the Germans pay heavily for it and they won’t forgive us. Hitler is stirring them up to hatred and blaming us and the Jews for all his country’s ills.’ He pushed his empty plate away from him. She took it to the kitchen and brought back a bowl of rice pudding, sweet and creamy and topped with ground nutmeg. ‘Julie, I really think you should think of moving to the country,’ he went on, digging his spoon into the pudding.
‘And leave you here? No, Harry, I will not. We stick together, come what may.’
‘And the baby?’
‘The same for George. Besides, where would I go? I know no one in the country and I should be lonely and miserable. At least here, I’ve got neighbours I know. Don’t ask me again, please.’
‘But you don’t know what it will be like.’
‘I don’t want to know. Suffice unto the day is the evil thereof.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘We’ll take it as it comes, Harry. Do you want to get rid of me?’ This last was said tearfully and he jumped up to put his arms round her.
‘Darling, how could you even think that? You are the whole world to me. I just want you safe.’
‘I am safe with you to look after me.’
Her faith in him worried him. He could never live up to it, but for the sake of harmony he dropped the subject. He did not even renew his plea when council workmen delivered fourteen sheets of corrugated iron, six girders, some nuts and bolts and a spanner, together with instructions for constructing the shelter and a bill for six pounds fourteen shillings, which they could pay by instalments if they chose. He simply set about digging a hole in the back lawn, five feet by seven and four feet deep. It took the whole of one Saturday afternoon, and the following day he assembled the shelter in the hole and covered it with all the earth he had excavated and topped it with the turf he had removed. He cut three steps down to it and then called to Julie. ‘Come and try it out.’
She went reluctantly and ventured down the steps. It was pitch dark because she was standing in the doorway blocking out the only source of light. It smelt dank and the earth beneath her feet was oozy mud. She screamed and scrambled out again. ‘I’m not going in there again. It’s just like the cupboard at the Coram, only worse. At least that was dry.’
‘I’ll put some duckboards in and some seats and a lantern. It won’t be so bad.’
‘It’s that or go to the country,’ he told her. ‘I want you and our son safe.’
‘Oh, well, I don’t suppose it will ever be needed,’ she said.
Harry came home from work one Saturday lunchtime to find her standing over George’s cot in tears. Lying beside him was a strange contraption made of rubber, canvas and Perspex. ‘I can’t put him in that,’ she wept. ‘It will frighten him. Why can’t he have a little gas mask like the ones we’ve got?’ They had gone to the council offices some time before to pick up their gas masks and had practised putting them on and sitting in them for several minutes to get used to them. Julie hated being enclosed like that and ripped hers off the minute Harry indicated they had practised long enough. Never had she imagined her baby would have his whole body enclosed in one and she would have to pump air into it for him to breathe.
‘He might pull an ordinary mask off,’ he said. ‘And perhaps they can’t make them small enough.’
She flung herself into his arms. ‘Harry, I’m frightened. What’s going to happen to us?’
‘I don’t know, I really don’t. Pray God we never have to use them.’ He dried her tears with his handkerchief. ‘Come on, cheer up. We’re not dead yet. Let’s have our dinner and go for a walk.’
Her laugh was a mite watery. ‘Harry, it’s raining cats and dogs.’
‘So it is. Then we’ll do that jigsaw puzzle Miss Paterson gave you for Christmas.’
‘I haven’t seen Miss Paterson since she came to visit when Harry was born. I should think she’s worried too.’
‘We all are, sweetheart. Tomorrow, if it’s fine, we’ll take the bus and see how she is.’
The winter was wet and miserable and did not help to lighten anyone’s mood, and in March German troops invaded Czechoslovakia, breaking Hitler’s agreement to stick to Sudetenland. The following month men aged twenty were called up for military training; aircraft production was stepped up and Chalfont’s Engineering were making radios twenty-four hours a day. On 21st August Hitler announced he had made a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, the strangest bedfellows you could imagine. When, on 1st September, he invaded Poland, not even the most diehard ostrich could ignore the fact that Britain had pledged to come to Poland’s aid and the time for keeping that promise had come. Burying one’s head in the sand was no longer an option.
That same day, the Territorial Army was mobilised and the evacuation of Britain’s schoolchildren began. Julie, pushing George in his second-hand cream and navy-blue pram, watched them lining up outside the school to be taken to Waterloo Station in charabancs, each carrying a small attaché case and a gas mask in a cardboard box, with a luggage label attached somewhere on their clothing, as if they themselves were pieces of luggage. Some looked bewildered, some excited by the prospect of adventure, some terrified to be leaving their mothers. And the mothers stood by in tears as their children were taken away to heaven knew where. Julie had been told she and George could be included and had received written instructions about what to take and where to meet, and Harry had renewed his pleas for her to go, but she was adamant. In his distress he shouted at her and she shouted back until George began to cry and they stopped to soothe him.
‘Harry, we mustn’t quarrel about it,’ she said, rocking the baby in her arms. ‘It upsets George.’
He smiled and kissed her. In one way he was glad she was so obdurate. Being parted from her and the baby would be terrible and there would be time enough to do something about it when the bombers actually came over.
Sunday, 3rd September was a lovely day of almost unbroken sunshine, unusually warm for the time of the year, and many people were in church, or working in their gardens, or taking a walk along the Embankment. Hearing there was to be an announcement they hurried home to switch on the wireless. At eleven o’clock Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the nation. The country was at war with Germany. Almost immediately the air-raid warning sounded, a terrible wail that froze Julie’s bones, so that she couldn’t move, couldn’t think clearly. Being Sunday Harry was at home and ushered her and George down into the dreaded Anderson shelter. He had been as good as his word and installed a wooden floor and put two deckchairs in it, together with a couple of orange boxes standing on end and a storm lantern. He had made a rockery round the door and stood the happy gnome at the entrance. It was slightly better than her first view of it, but only slightly. Harry’s presence soothed her, but she wondered if she would have the courage to go down there if the siren went when he was not at home.
After a few minutes the all-clear went and they emerged into the bright sunshine to the realisation that it was a false alarm. Nothing had happened.
It was all happening elsewhere. A British Expeditionary Force was sent to France; the RAF dropped leaflets, not bombs, on Germany; a U-boat torpedoed the aircraft carrier Courageous, and another managed to breech the defences in Scapa Flow and sink the Royal Oak; and in November Russia attacked Finland. At home Winston Churchill was back in the Cabinet and being characteristically pugnacious.
Everyone had to black out their windows when darkness fell so that not a chink of light escaped to guide the bombers to their targets, as if the broad ribbon of the Thames were not guide enough, and vehicle lights were covered leaving only a small slit for the drivers to see where they were going. There were no street lights. Everyone was supposed to carry their gas masks and identity cards everywhere they went. It all seemed a waste of time and trouble. No bombers came and many of the evacuees drifted back. Julie relaxed and began to make plans for George’s first birthday.
It was time he came out of gowns and into proper boy’s clothing and she searched the shops for little shorts with button-on braces and little shirts to tuck into them. She bought his first soft leather shoes to replace bootees. He was no longer a baby but a little boy, sitting up and giggling when she played with him, reaching out for anything he could put in his mouth to test out his new teeth.
‘Mum wants us to take him over there for a birthday tea on Sunday,’ Harry told Julie. ‘Millie’s bringing Dorothy.’ Dorothy was eight months older than George. ‘She’s baking a special cake. I’ve said we’ll go. That’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Julie’s relationship with her mother-in-law was one of guarded neutrality. They were polite to each other, though not exactly warm. They both doted on George, which made a big difference.
Julie wouldn’t travel by Underground when she was alone, it always brought back memories of being shut in the dark even though it was well lit, but with Harry beside her carrying George in his new warm wool coat and a knitted pixie hat, she endured it. She had spent more on the clothes than she should have done, but as far as she was concerned nothing was too good for her son. And Hilda Walker echoed that. The cake which stood in the centre of the tea table was a work of art: a sponge filled with jam and cream and thickly iced. It had ‘Happy Birthday, George’ inscribed in yellow icing on its surface alongside a yellow sugar rose. There were also sandwiches filled with all sorts of good things, a whipped cream trifle covered in hundreds and thousands, and chocolate iced buns.
Hilda took George from Harry as soon as they arrived and hugged him. ‘My, you are growing into a big boy. We shall soon have you running around and getting into mischief.’
‘He can already pull himself onto his feet and shuffle round the furniture,’ Julie said. ‘Harry is going to make a gate for the stairs.’
Dorothy did not like this attention given to her cousin and began grabbing at her grandmother’s skirt demanding her share. Harry picked her up and made a fuss of her and they all sat down to enjoy their tea: Donald and Hilda, Millie and Ian, Harry and Julie and the two children.
‘Looking at this you would never believe there was a war on,’ Julie said, surveying the table. ‘However did you manage it?’
‘You can always get things if you know where to go,’ Hilda said. ‘And we must make the most of it before everything is rationed.’
Everyone had been issued with ration books when they collected their identity cards the previous September, but so far they had not been used. They had been told they would have to register at a grocer’s for all their rationed goods and Julie had dutifully registered with a small shop in the Old Kent Road, where she did most of her food shopping.
They were halfway through tea when they heard someone come in the back door. Before Hilda could go and investigate, the dining room door opened and Roland put his head round it. ‘Is this a party and can anyone join in?’
‘Roly!’ Hilda flew across the room to hug him and drag him into the room. ‘You’re just in time for tea. Are you on leave?’
‘Forty-eight hours. Hallo, everyone.’ He kissed his sister and Julie and stood looking at his nephew and niece. ‘My, they’ve grown.’ He delved in his kitbag and produced a little aeroplane carved in wood, which he presented to George. ‘There, little fellow, happy birthday.’ Then he went to his kitbag again. ‘Can’t leave the other little monster out, even if it’s not her birthday.’ This time he produced a rag doll for Dorothy.
‘Sit down and have some tea,’ Hilda said. ‘Tell us what you’ve been doing.’
He pulled up another chair while his mother fetched out more crockery and cutlery. ‘Flying about the countryside, patrolling the Channel looking for enemy shipping, whizzing over to France – nothing very exciting.’
‘That won’t last,’ his father said.
‘No, I don’t suppose it will, but all this waiting about is making everyone jittery.’
‘We’re not hanging about,’ Harry said. ‘The factory is working round the clock.’
‘Yes, well, there’s some catching up to do.’ He paused. ‘What are your plans? Going to stay at home and wait to be called or are you going to enlist?’
‘He’s in a reserved occupation,’ Julie put in. ‘Radios are needed urgently.’
‘So they are, but I reckon women can make them as easily as men. That right, Pa?’
‘Yes,’ his father agreed. ‘Chalfont’s has already taken on a lot of women as the men leave for the forces. Harry knows that.’
‘Well, one of you in uniform is more than enough,’ Hilda said. ‘So let’s drop the subject.’
They dutifully obeyed but the conversation left Harry musing. Was it cowardly of him to want to stay at home and look after his wife and child? After all, he was doing a useful job, and how did he know he would be able to do any good in the forces? He’d probably get called up anyway and then he wouldn’t have a choice. Wait or go? He looked at his wife, laughing and wiping chocolate icing from George’s face, and his heart almost burst with pride and joy, mixed with a feeling of helplessness that he did not know how to keep them safe.
It was after tea was over and he and Roly wandered out into the garden that the subject was brought up again. ‘Do you think I should enlist?’ he asked his brother, as he flicked the wheel of his lighter and held it out for Roly to light his cigarette and then lit his own.
‘It’s up to you, old man, but if you wait until you’re conscripted you probably won’t get your choice of service.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘Of course it matters. Just think about it. The poor bloody infantry get the worst of it and if it’s anything like the last lot it will be hell. As for the navy, they are at the mercy of the U-boats. Being blown up at sea, perhaps floating about on a bit of wreckage for days and dying of exposure, is not a nice way to go.’
‘How cheerful you are! You can get blown up in an aeroplane.’
‘Yes, but at least it’s quick. And if you survive you do get to come back to base every night, and if you’re lucky and near enough, you can get home more often. There’s something about flying, being up among the clouds, swooping about like a bird, that gets to you. You can’t beat it.’
‘Mum will climb the wall if we’re both in uniform, you heard what she said. As for Julie, I dread to think what she’d say …’
‘Your decision, old man.’
‘Yes.’
Ian strolled out to join them. ‘The women are washing up and your father is listening to the news, keeping an eye on the babies at the same time.’ He accepted the cigarette Roly offered him. ‘Do you think those things will do any good?’ He nodded towards the Anderson shelter a little further down the garden.
‘They are supposed to withstand everything but a direct hit,’ Harry said, offering his lighter. ‘Haven’t you got one?’
‘What, in a flat with no garden? Where would we put it?’
‘Never thought of that.’
‘The basement has been designated our shelter. At least it’s warm down there right next to the boiler. The landlord has installed bunks and a lavatory and some heavy steel doors to withstand shock waves.’
‘You’re not sending Millie and Dorothy to the country, then?’
‘It’s the same with Julie.’
They fell silent, contemplating a future they could only imagine. They looked towards the house as Julie came to the door and called them in. ‘It will soon be blackout time.’
‘Let’s make the most of Christmas, shall we?’ Harry said as they trooped indoors, shut the door behind them and drew the blackout curtains.
Making the most of Christmas meant ignoring the news, stocking up on tinned foods, flour and sugar, candles and oil for lamps to be used in the shelter and in the event of the electricity being cut off. The trouble was that everyone seemed to be doing the same thing and already the price of foodstuffs was rising and some things were becoming hard to find, especially those that had to be brought into the country by sea. Bananas had disappeared and oranges were like gold dust. Julie had to pay a shilling for a single orange to put in George’s stocking and it turned out to be sour. He pulled a face and spat it out.
‘You shouldn’t have bought it,’ Harry said. ‘George isn’t old enough to know the difference, is he?’
‘No, but I so wanted him to have one,’ she said, sprinkling it thickly with sugar and offering it to him again. ‘The only time we had an orange at the Coram was on Christmas Day.’
Her life in the orphanage had left an indelible mark on Julie. She was scarred because of it; her claustrophobia, her obsession with cleanliness and routine and her fear of doing wrong in the eyes of those in authority were ingrained in her. But she could be extraordinarily stubborn when she chose, and when she dug her heels in, nothing and nobody could budge her. Coram had not taught her that; it was something inbred in her, a throwback to one or other of her parents – probably her father, because her mother had given up on her. That rankled; she did not know what she could have done as a tiny baby to be abandoned in that way. She had tried to talk to Harry about how she felt, not only about her background but how much his loving her meant to her, but the inmates had never been encouraged to speak of their emotions in the home, and she found it difficult to express herself. But she swore to herself that whatever it took she would make sure George did not go short, either of affection or food.