Telegrams and Teacakes: A heartbreaking World War Two family saga, page 17
‘Dear God,’ she cried, dropping the newspaper on the ground like hot coals. She was so physically revolted and horrified by these cruel and tragic events that she felt hot bile bursting into her throat, and she rushed to the bushes to vomit.
‘Hundreds of thousands of defenceless people,’ she whispered into her hands that she clasped over her mouth in horror, ‘murdered in cold blood, oh heavens no! Why, oh why?’
‘Audrey?’ came Uncle John’s voice from behind her. ‘Are you all right, dear?’
Wild-eyed, Audrey turned to face John and pointed to the newspaper on the ground, its pages lifted by the invisible hand of the breeze. Slowly, John picked up the paper and read the story, shaking his head in stunned disbelief, muttering and cursing ‘monsters’ and ‘lunatics’ under his breath. Walking over to Audrey, he wrapped his arms round her shoulders.
‘It says people – children and babies – were killed outside their street doors, just shot in the street… I can’t— It’s an unimaginable, devastating crime, John.’ Audrey wept until her throat was sore, and though John soothed and comforted her, his cheeks and neck were also wet with tears. John wasn’t one to cry and his obvious distress made Audrey feel even worse. They stood together in an embrace for a long moment, speechless with grief, before being interrupted by Mary rushing into the yard, back from the strawberry fields, where you could pick as many strawberries as you could eat for a bob.
‘Audrey?’ Mary asked, her smile disappearing from her face. ‘What’s wrong?’
Mary was closely followed by Betty, Cyril, Vera and Dora, who had also been to pick strawberries and who had mouths stained with pink juice and cheeks kissed by the sun. Audrey sniffed and quickly wiped her eyes, before blowing her nose on her hanky with trembling hands and plastering a wobbly smile on her lips. She couldn’t tell Mary the truth – how would she explain such a thing? – so instead she wrapped her arms round the little girl and pulled her in for a hug.
‘I’m fine,’ said Audrey. ‘Have you got plenty of strawberries? You smell like one yourself!’
‘We ate hundreds!’ said Mary. ‘And we picked lots too, to make jam. Here you are. Smell them!’
Mary thrust a basket of fresh, ambrosial red berries into Audrey’s hands and, as she sniffed their delectable perfume, Audrey’s vision blurred with more hot tears. The aroma took her abruptly back to peacetime when the growers had gone around with their carts laden with fruit ready to flog, and folk had enjoyed bowls of them for pudding, served with lashings of cream and sugar. The contrast between that memory and what she’d just read in the newspaper made Audrey feel dizzy. How could two such extremes be part of the same lifetime?
‘They look wonderful,’ she said. ‘I will make pots of jam out of these, but for now, I think I should take you for a swim at the river. I’m always promising to and I never have time, but today, I’ll make time. I’ll bring the twins for a breath of fresh air too. Let’s get a blanket and a few things together.’
The children all broke out into cheers and laughter and Audrey exhaled, pleased to be bringing a smile to their lips. They had to live for the moment, for heaven knew what tomorrow might bring.
‘That’s it, Audrey,’ said Uncle John quietly, ‘keep on keeping on. It’s all we can do.’
Inside the house, Audrey tried to pull herself together and take her mind off the dreadful news by carrying out some ordinary tasks. She put the strawberries in the larder alongside the nettles she planned to steam and serve with a knob of butter and a dash of nutmeg for dinner, then fed Marmalade the cat the meat from a cod’s head she’d simmered in milk and mixed with bread. Moving upstairs when she heard the babies stir from their nap, she collected two blankets from the bottom of the wardrobe, picked up Emily and Donald, took them outside and got them comfortable in their pram bassinet. All the while, in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help imagining how those frightened and innocent mothers must have felt, knowing their children were going to be— She shook her head to rid her mind of the haunting images.
‘Ready?’ said Mary, appearing by Audrey’s side with a wide grin. She was followed by the other children, who were chattering excitedly – and Betty too.
‘Yes,’ said Audrey, then, glancing at Betty with a smile, ‘Looks like we’ve got our hands full!’
* * *
Betty almost had to run to keep up with Audrey, who, deep in thought, was marching along the bank of the Stour to find a nice spot for them to sit down and for the children to play in the water. With the sea out of bounds with barbed wire, railings in the water and other defences, the locals had turned to the river for swimming and it was busy with children playing, with their worried mothers on the edge warning them not to go in too deep. Even though the locals had begged the council to cordon off a safe area of the river for bathing, so far they hadn’t taken that step and there had been numerous stories of accidents and near-drownings. But, children needed to play in the sunshine and learn to swim in the summer months, and this was their best option.
‘How about here?’ called Betty, finding a flattened area of grass where a family had obviously previously been.
‘Hmm?’ said Audrey, who had seemed thoroughly distracted ever since they left the bakery.
‘I said how about here?’ said Betty again.
‘Okay yes, we’ll go here,’ said Audrey, throwing down the blanket over the grass, near a shallow incline into the water. ‘And children, you must only paddle, unless you’re a good swimmer. Who can swim?’ She addressed the line of children, who were all racing to get off their shoes and socks. Nobody raised their hand.
‘Oh dear,’ Audrey said. ‘Well, then it’s paddling only, and you have two fishing nets between you, so you can catch some tiddlers too. I bought a jar with me, for your catch. Off you go! Dora, you can help me with Emily and Donald. I think we’ll lie them on their backs on the blanket, so they can kick their legs around and look up at the sky. You’ll like that, won’t you, my little darlings?’
While Audrey sorted out the twins, Betty sat down on the blanket with Dora crawling across her lap, and watched the children splash, paddle and laugh in the river. Her head was crowded with thoughts: of Sam, Robert and the nursery she was working with Pat to set up. Pat’s house had a coal-serviced copper in which they could boil the nappies; they’d give the kiddies cod liver oil and iron tablets, and a teatime snack of bread and jam. They’d play out in the garden and sing and they’d put games and books in the Anderson shelter, to preclude boredom if they had to go in.
‘Can I ask you a question, Audrey?’ asked Betty.
‘Hmm?’ said Audrey, who was staring off into the middle distance and frowning. ‘Yes, what is it?’
‘It’s about the nursery that Pat and I are opening next week,’ she said. ‘We’re only looking after the children and babies we know at the moment, but Pat thinks other mothers with wartime jobs might want us to help them. If they do, we’ll probably apply for assistance from the government. Anyway, for now, on the days when I’m at the bakery, Pat will be looking after the children on her own. Do you think that it’s too much for her? She could potentially be looking after Joy, Cyril, Vera, Dora and the twins all at once and she seems to get awfully tired sometimes.’
‘Pat? Tired?’ scoffed Audrey. ‘Never! That woman has more energy and drive in her than two women half her age put together. Don’t you worry about her. She’ll cope with that number of children, no problem. And it’s not as if it’s an official nursery, open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. like the nursery that’s opened in Bournemouth for the munitions workers – it’ll just be now and then, won’t it, for our family and friends?’
Betty smiled and nodded but couldn’t help thinking about the previous day when she’d been creating a play area in Pat’s garden. Pat had been sitting on the deckchair for only a minute before she was in a deep sleep with her mouth wide open. What if she did that when she was in charge of the children?
‘You’re doing a commendable thing, you and Pat,’ said Audrey in a serious voice. ‘Enabling women to get on with their jobs will hopefully put an end to this war sooner rather than later.’
‘It’s nothing really,’ said Betty. ‘As you said, it’s just now and then at the moment, to give you and Lily a break – and me help with Robert’s children.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Audrey. ‘There’s so much wrong in the world that when someone does something good it should be celebrated.’
Betty thought that Audrey was in a strangely emotional mood and wasn’t sure why. She hoped she hadn’t had any bad news but she didn’t want to pry.
‘Talking of celebrations,’ said Audrey, ‘why don’t I make a cake for you to have on the first day you have the children at Pat’s? I’m sure all the kiddies will want a slice. It might be fatless, eggless and sugarless, but I’ll see what I can do. It will be a way of saying thank you.’
Betty blushed at Audrey making such a fuss, but before she could argue, she realised that perhaps Audrey needed a reason to bake a celebration cake. Maybe she was searching for the good, and right now this was as good as it got, just as she had said that day on the Overcliff.
‘Yes,’ said Betty, watching Audrey stand up, balance Emily and Donald one on each hip and walk them to the water’s edge to point out a dragonfly hovering over the surface of the water. ‘A cake would be perfect. Never mind about the fat, eggs or sugar, it’s the thought that counts.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
The dreadful news she’d read in the paper had had a profound impact on Audrey. From the moment she woke up before dawn, to the moment she fell asleep just before midnight, all she could think about was the children who had unwittingly gone to their deaths before they’d barely begun their lives. Though others would argue that children had no choice but to grow up quickly in wartime and should face the horror, she felt as though she had to do everything in her power to protect the younger generation’s innocence and try to give them a sense of normality, showing them love and kindness rather than blinding them with stories of blood and violence. She couldn’t do anything for those poor little children who had already gone to their deaths, but for the children she cared for, simple, peaceful things like a game of marbles, a stroll by the sea, a gentle story at bedtime and a slice of a freshly baked cake became more important.
‘What’ll I put in this cake?’ she said to herself, at the end of a busy working day at the bakery. They’d sold out of bread and counter goods early, so she’d had time to check the next day’s orders before finding the time to quickly bake a cake, then pop it to Pat’s when she collected the twins, who had been with Pat and Betty for the afternoon. Hopefully, it would make a nice teatime treat for them all before they had the deep purple beetroot soup, currently simmering on top of the range, for their dinner.
Opening the cupboards and checking through the ingredients, she sighed. Conventional celebration cakes were something of a rarity these days – due to shipping losses, consignments of dried fruit hadn’t come through for weeks, icing sugar was banned and the sugar ration at an all-time low. Though she had a certain quantity of ingredients permitted for counter goods in the bakery, home baking was a different story, and she would have to be creative.
‘Apples, carrots and honey,’ she said to herself, holding a bowl of carrots in her hands. ‘I’m sure I can do something tasty with this.’
Taking down a mixing bowl from the dresser, she placed it on the table and arranged the ingredients around it. She created an apple cake using dried egg, sweetened with carrots and honey and flavoured with cinnamon and cloves.
Waiting for the cake to bake, Audrey took off her apron and used the time to write a letter to Charlie. She wanted her letters to bring him joy, so she described as best she could the smell of the strawberries and the pink stains on the children’s faces, and the most delightful moment when Emily and Donald had smiled tiny lopsided smiles for the first time. She finished off the letter by making him a promise to get a photograph taken of the twins, so she could send it to him to keep in his breast pocket, close to his heart. Writing to Charlie made her miss him dreadfully and, with eyes blurry with tears, she put down her pen. Wondering when she could find a minute to take the letter to the post office, she quickly turned her attention to the cake, and pulled it from the oven just in time. ‘Concentrate, Audrey!’ she scolded herself, inspecting the crust, which was moments away from burning. ‘Goodness me! Where’s my head?’
Placing the cake on a wire cooling rack, she pressed her fingers to her forehead, where a headache was gathering momentum. She sighed. Her head was in a hundred different places – no wonder it sometimes ached.
With the delicious aroma of apple cake wafting through the bakery, William walked to the bedroom doorway to find Elsie sitting at the small writing desk under the window. The late sun fell through the window onto the crown of Elsie’s black hair, making it shine like molten tar. When she turned to face him, William was taken aback by how tired she looked – she had grey bags under her eyes and her ordinarily cherry-pink cheeks were pale. Her arms, which were uncovered as she was still in her slip, had grown thinner. Concern rose within him. Had he been too self-obsessed to notice his wife was suffering? She worked such long hours on the buses, or else was helping in the bakery or at home with Violet and her sisters – did she ever get time to rest? Had his nightmares kept her from sleep? He shuddered with guilt.
‘What are you working on, Elsie?’ he said, coming into the room and resting his hands on the back of her chair. He lifted her hair, which was fantastically thick and soft, and let it fall through his fingers. It was the first time he’d touched her hair for ages and she straightened her back in surprise at the contact. She smiled at him, colour rising in her cheeks.
‘I’m writing letters to help free my father,’ she said. ‘Since Churchill said “Collar the lot” and all those innocent people were interned, there’s been an outcry. Now, thousands of internees have been freed, but my father is still not at liberty. Mother and I are writing to whoever we can think of to campaign for his release too. He’s not even considered a high security risk, so I don’t understand why he’s still being held. In his last letter he said he was working in glove-making in the camp, so he’s just being used as free labour! I’m finding people to vouch for his character and think it’s probably a bureaucratic process or a tribunal we have to go through, but I want to hurry it along and get him home again.’
William nodded, feeling horribly aware of how little attention he’d paid to Elsie’s family. He realised he must do more to support her, like a decent husband would.
‘You’re amazing,’ he said, leaning to kiss the top of her head. She turned her face up to his and the atmosphere between them was charged. He had just leaned in to kiss her lips when there was a sharp knock on the bedroom door.
‘Elsie? William? Are you in there?’ said Audrey. ‘Could one of you run an errand for me, please?’
‘Coming!’ said William, smiling at Elsie, then using his crutches to walk to the door. He opened it to Audrey.
‘I’d forgotten I promised to pop up to the Norfolk Hotel because they want to increase their bread order,’ she said. ‘But I’m also supposed to be taking a cake round to Pat’s house for tea and to collect the twins. I was wondering if either of you could take the cake for me and if I can get there later I will, otherwise could you bring the twins home for me?’
William looked over at Elsie, but she stretched her mouth into an upside-down, apologetic smile.
‘Sorry, Audrey,’ she said, ‘but my shift on the buses starts in twenty minutes.’
‘I’ll go,’ said William. ‘It’s only round the corner and I can get there and back before I’m due in the bakehouse again.’
Audrey looked incredibly relieved and quickly hugged William in thanks.
‘The cake is on the kitchen table,’ she said and dashed back down the stairs; from the bottom she called up: ‘Make sure you have a slice yourself. Thank you again, I won’t be late!’
* * *
William walked, with the aid of his crutches, to Pat’s road, which was just five minutes away from the bakery. As he moved up Fisherman’s Road, he waved to, or greeted, the various shopkeepers closing up for the day, carrying on their businesses despite the difficult wartime conditions. With bombproof tape on their windows, sandbags protecting the shop entrances and strategically placed stirrup pumps, war was evident everywhere – not least in his missing foot and scarred face, thought William, catching sight of his reflection in a window.
‘Blasted war,’ he muttered, wishing for a hasty conclusion. On reaching one end of Pat’s road, he looked further up the street for her house, number 30, which he easily identified as it had a beautiful cherry tree in blossom right outside the front window. Deciding to take a slight shortcut and approach the house from the back door, he walked down the alleyway that ran along the backs of the houses. Suddenly he became aware of the smell of smoke. He was puzzled: bonfires were now banned. Not knowing where it was coming from, he used his crutches to help him stand on tiptoe and see over the garden fences. He registered in shock that the smoke was coming from Pat’s kitchen window and moved as quickly as he could to her house. Pushing through the garden gate and flying up the garden path to the back door, he was greeted by thick smoke billowing from the window. His heart hammered in his chest and he thought of the children inside. Rattling the back door, which was locked, he called out to Pat and Betty.
‘Pat!’ he yelled, pulling his coat over his mouth. ‘Where are you? Betty! Children!’
From inside the kitchen he could hear the terrified cries of several children – and the faint sound of Betty’s panicked voice shouting instructions to Cyril, telling him to unlock the door. Trying to work out what had happened and what best to do, William leaned on his good leg and used his crutch to smash the glass of the locked kitchen door. Pushing his arm through, he fumbled through the smoke to reach the key in the door, which he unlocked, letting the door swing open. He was immediately forced back by flames leaping from the floor and curtains. He was temporarily paralysed by a flashback to the flames that had devoured the truck he’d driven in France when it was hit by a bomb, killing all the passengers. He took a deep breath, then, covering his mouth, peered through the smoke to see the group of children huddled together around the pram bassinet in which Emily and Donald were lying. Then he noticed that there was a person collapsed on the floor – Pat!
