One

SEPTEMBER 1940

Sylvia was helping her mother with the weekly wash when she heard it. She was standing at the kitchen table, hands in a bowl of soapy water, while Mom was feeding clothes through the mangle. Sylvia pushed some dark curls of hair away from her forehead with her arm and tilted her head.

‘Ssh, listen – what’s that?’

Her mother, Pauline Whitehouse, her thick red hair held back in a flowery turban, stilled the handle of the mangle. They could both hear it then, coming from next door’s garden.

‘Oh good Lord, it sounds like Marjorie!’ Pauline rushed for the back door, wiping her hands on her apron.

It was raining outside. Over the pattering drops Sylvia could clearly hear the sounds of distress. Her heart pounded. Surely those noises weren’t coming from cheerful, good-natured Mrs Gould? But already she knew, with a terrible dread: something had happened to one of the boys.

In the distance she heard her mother’s soothing tones and Marjorie Gould’s choking cries. Mom led Marjorie through the gap dividing the two gardens and towards the house. Sylvia forced herself to move. She rushed to wipe her hands and put the kettle on.

‘Come on, bab, let’s get you in the dry,’ Pauline was saying. ‘That’s it, let’s sit you down . . .’

There were dark spots of rain on Mom’s apron and on Marjorie’s dress, which was royal blue, patterned with little white anchors. Sylvia froze again with shock. She had known Marjorie Gould all her life – Marjorie was like a second mother to her – and she had never, ever seen her like this before. Marjorie was a big-boned, normally splendid-looking woman with thick, blonde hair, who favoured bright frocks and lipstick. But today she was hunched over, shaking and weeping, her face contorted. As Mom guided her to the chair by the unlit range, Sylvia saw that Marjorie had no shoes on. She had run out into the wet in her stockinged feet.

‘No!’ she was sobbing. ‘No . . . No . . . !’ There was a piece of paper crumpled tightly in her right hand.

‘Get the kettle on, Sylv,’ Pauline said.

‘I already have.’ Her eyes met her mother’s and Pauline caught hold of Sylvia’s arm and pulled her hurriedly down the hall, out of earshot.

‘It’s Raymond.’ They were standing by the coat hooks. An old black mac of Dad’s sagged from a peg. ‘He’s . . . Oh good heavens—’ Sylvia saw the awful truth of it hit her mother. Her hands came up to her cheeks. ‘His ship’s gone down.’

‘No!’ Sylvia gasped. Raymond was the oldest of Marjorie Gould’s three sons: Raymond, Laurie and Paul. ‘But does that mean . . . ? Is he . . . ?’

Pauline looked down with a faint nod. ‘Must be.’

Sylvia felt sick and shaky, even though her mind could not fully take in the news. Raymond, the boy next door. Raymond, a gentle, dark-haired lad who had gone off and joined the Navy, looking for a new life, a way to escape from his father and to separate himself from the girl he loved, but who did not love him back – Audrey, Sylvia’s elder sister.

‘If only Laurie hadn’t just joined up as well,’ Pauline said, anguished. Laurie had not long gone into the RAF. ‘This terrible, wicked war . . .’ She squeezed Sylvia’s arm. ‘I must go back to her.’

Sylvia sank down onto the stairs as her mother headed back to the kitchen. She heard Mrs Gould break into more gulping sobs. Crouching on the third step up, she gripped her hands together to try and stop them trembling. She had to remind herself to breathe. Raymond – Raymond Gould, aged twenty-one. Sweet, solemn Raymond, just a year older than herself, whom she had known for as long as she could remember. Raymond, who would now never be twenty-two, or -three or -four.

She rested her head in her hands, staring, unseeing, at the tiled hall floor.

Raymond was in so many of the family photographs.

Sylvia moved restlessly around the house that afternoon. Mom was next door with Mrs Gould and her youngest son Paul. Dad and Audrey were at work and her brother Jack was at school. Sylvia worked evenings, but it was her day off. She found herself wandering into the front room. They did not light the fire in there very often and the atmosphere was rather cold and stiff compared with the back room, where they all ate every night around the table.

There were three dark-green chairs arranged round the fire with its polished brass fender. On a side-table facing the window Mom kept her carefully dusted collection of framed photographs, arranged on a red chenille cloth. Sylvia and Audrey as little girls smiled out of the most eye-catching one. At least, Sylvia was smiling. She had been six when the picture was taken and Audrey eight. Sylvia, pink-cheeked, with her cloud of black, frizzy hair, was beaming amiably, displaying a selection of teeth and gaps. Audrey looked more solemn, unwilling to smile if she did not feel like it. She did have a full row of teeth, though.

Sylvia always wondered why Mom had gone to the trouble of having her children’s pictures done just when they had half their teeth missing. The one of their younger brother Jack, freckly and auburn-haired like Mom, showed him grinning, with black gaps along his gums. There was Mom and Dad’s wedding photograph: Dad skinny and happy, Mom with her hair piled magnificently on her head and looking shy. And in the front row there were tiny portraits in ornate pewter frames of each of the three of them as babies, once they could sit up. As they grew older there were lots of pictures, because the two dads, Ted Whitehouse and Stanley Gould, had bought a Beau Brownie camera between them. From all of these photographs the Gould boys smiled out as well. Raymond was in so many of them, dark-eyed and serious, while Laurie was blond like his mother. Paul came along later.

Sylvia chose a picture with all of them in, and sat down to study it. Raymond, about nine in the picture, was standing at the end of the line of children in the back garden where they’d spent so many hours playing. The picture seemed so real and close. She could hear his piping boy’s voice, before it broke into a deep, manly one; and she remembered his skinny legs in baggy shorts, tearing along the garden. Raymond bowling a tennis ball for cricket games, furious when Audrey whacked it over onto the railway line. Raymond intent on his homework, getting more and more nervy as he floundered at the grammar school into which Stanley, his father, had steamrollered him.

She looked closely into Raymond’s eyes. He was so familiar, like a brother. She realized then, though, with a pang, that in her whole life she had scarcely ever been alone with Raymond or talked to him on her own. They had always been in a gang. He had just been one of those things she took for granted, like the furniture, or the buses in Kings Heath High Street, or the Market Hall in Birmingham. And now Raymond was gone and the Market Hall had been wrecked by a bombing raid.

All through the long ‘phoney war’ of last winter Raymond had been on HMS Esk, a destroyer, laying mines around the coast of Norway and Holland. The ship had taken part in the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk. Sylvia knew all this must have made Stanley Gould prouder than he would ever be capable of saying. The last time Raymond came home on leave he had been just as serious, but he looked older, and strong and capable. Sylvia had wondered then whether Audrey might change her mind and love Raymond back. She knew Marjorie was hoping – and Mom. But no. Poor Raymond carried his flame for Audrey quietly and stoically. And now . . .

‘Oh, Raymond,’ she said, smoothing her finger over the glass. How could it be that he was dead, that they would never see him again, ever? Cradling the photograph in her arms, she rocked back and forth as if giving comfort to Raymond and to herself. Gradually the ache in her released into sobs and the tears came.

It was all they could think about.

Ted Whitehouse, Sylvia’s dad, was a foreman at the Rover in Acocks Green. It was one of Herbert Austin’s shadow factories, set up before the war to disguise the whereabouts of armaments production by removing some of it from well-known factory sites. The works were making parts for Bristol Hercules engines.

Since the bombing started Ted had to take his turn at the works, on fire-watch, but it was not his shift tonight. He was able to go round and commiserate with Stanley. Ted, a tall, slender man with dark hair and eyes, looked pale and strained after this experience. He sat down in the kitchen to unlace his boots. Sylvia and Jack, who was twelve, were in there with Pauline already. Pauline had broken the news to Jack when he came in from school. He went up to his room for a bit and now he was silent and withdrawn.

‘This is when you really know you’re at war,’ Ted said, pushing each boot off with the other foot.

‘Oh, I think we all know that, love,’ his wife said. They had got used to so many things already in this war: gas masks, the shortages, the dark streets and blacked-out houses, the terrible news as the Germans invaded one country after another. But this was the worst so far. This brought the war right up close, into their homes and hearts. Pauline’s eyes were red. ‘How’s Stanley?’ she asked.

Ted shook his head, laying the black boots side-by-side. ‘As you’d expect.’

They heard the front door open as Audrey came in and they all exchanged looks.

Ted got up. ‘You tell her,’ he said quietly, moving out of the kitchen, boots in hand. ‘I’ve had all I can stand.’

They heard him say, ‘All right, love?’ quietly as he passed Audrey. She came into the kitchen in her office clothes: a dark-blue skirt and white blouse. She worked, without enthusiasm, as a shorthand typist for an insurance company. Crossing the kitchen, she flung herself into the chair next to the range in which Marjorie Gould had howled out her grief earlier.

Audrey was tall and slender, very much like her father with her brown eyes, dark lashes and long, sleek hair, which was pinned back in a fashionable style for work. Though less obviously pretty and pink-cheeked than Sylvia, she had a striking, strong-featured face and a large, well-defined nose. She gave off a fiery kind of energy, which attracted people to her. Among the three children in the family, she was definitely always the boss.

She slid her black court shoes off, crossed one leg over, twitching her foot impatiently up and down. She looked round at everyone.

‘What’s the matter with you lot?’ she asked. ‘You’ve got faces as long as Livery Street.’

In the silence that followed she uncrossed her legs and sat up, really taking in that something was amiss.

‘Why are you all in here?’ It was rare for Jack to be in the kitchen at this time, as the grammar school gave him so much homework.

Sylvia and her mother looked at each other.

‘Audrey, love,’ Pauline said, slowly, as if she didn’t want to bring the words out. ‘There’s been some terrible news today.’

Jack made a small sound, as if stifling a sob, and covered his face with his hands. Sylvia felt her chest tighten so that she could hardly breathe.

Audrey’s eyes searched their mother’s face. ‘News? How d’you mean?’

Pauline explained. Sylvia watched Audrey’s face as she tried to make sense of what her mother was saying. Her eyes widened. She curled forward, arms crossed, hugging herself.

‘Could he be alive?’ She just managed to keep her voice steady. ‘He could be . . . I mean, he can swim, can’t he?’

‘I think it’s over,’ Pauline said gently. ‘There was a telegram from the Navy.’

‘Marjorie came in earlier,’ Sylvia said. ‘She was in a very bad state.’

Pauline went to Audrey to put her arm round her. ‘Audrey, bab . . . ?’ But at the first touch on her shoulder, Audrey threw her mother off and got up.

‘That’s terrible news,’ she said. ‘Poor Mr and Mrs Gould.’ She wasn’t meeting any of their eyes. ‘I can’t really take it in. I’m going up to take my things off.’

She walked out of the kitchen, leaving them all watching the space she had left. Her shoes were discarded at untidy angles next to the range.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Pauline said. She sank down on one of the chairs, looking completely exhausted.