Keep the Home Fires Burning. Anne Bennett
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Tony saw the look and said, ‘The pair of you are plain stupid.’
‘Tony, I won’t tell you again,’ Sarah said sharply. ‘Magda and Missie are over two years younger than you. How are they to know these things? We have never been to war before. And don’t worry,’ she added to the twins as they went into the school yard, ‘Dad won’t be in danger for ages yet, because he will have to be trained to be a soldier.’
Magda sighed with relief. Tony was probably right, she thought. She didn’t know much about going to war but she knew one thing: just talking about it made everyone bad-tempered.
The following Sunday the children’s grandparents came to tea as usual. Bill had known that his mother-in-law would have something to say about his decision to enlist and he wasn’t disappointed. As soon as he entered the house with the twins after their walk, she started on him, berating him roundly for his lack of concern and understanding, and was still going strong when they sat down to tea. Tony had sloped off as usual, so it was just the twins sitting on the horsehair sofa, being stabbed to death with its stuffing, while their grandmother continued to carp on in her thin, shrill voice, even more vitriolic than she usually was.
Magda, casting a glimpse her way, thought that it was just as if she had anger bubbling up inside her, so much so, that it was coming up in spittle and forming a white line along her thin bloodless lips. Her grandfather valiantly tried to deflect the conversation away from Bill until in the end she snapped, ‘Be quiet, Eddie. What are you going on about? There is only one concern here and that’s Bill and his stupidity.’
Bill looked up at Clara’s face and sighed before saying mildly enough, ‘Well, Clara, I know from experience you won’t let a matter drop until you have worried it to death like a dog with a bone so you might as well have your say.’
Clara glared at him and wiped her mouth and fingers on a napkin before saying, ‘What I really want to know is whatever possessed you to even think about enlisting like this? It’s totally irresponsible.’
Bill shook his head. ‘I don’t see it that way.’
‘There is no other way to see it,’ Clara burst out, ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I am prepared to fight, because I see the Germans gaining more and more power as each day passes,’ Bill said. ‘They won’t stop until they have the whole of Europe under their dominance and we must all fight to prevent that. I’m going to war because I love my family and want to protect them, and I would feel less of a man if I didn’t do it.’
Even Marion, who didn’t want her husband to join in any war, was impressed by the sincere and yet firm way Bill had answered her mother. The children were all awed, not so much by the words their father had used, but by the fact that he was the first person they knew to render their grandmother speechless.
Before Clara had time to think of some retort, Bill spoke directly to his father-in-law, for whom he had always had great respect. ‘Do you see my point in any of this, Eddie?’
Eddie glanced first at his wife, but then he said, ‘I do, Bill. You’ve put it very well and you’re right. It is no good expecting the man either side of you to volunteer while you stay safe and dry. Britain is a much smaller country than Germany and so needs all the soldiers that it can get. This will not be just a young man’s war. Sometimes, however painful, sacrifices have to be made.’
‘Pat is enlisting along with me,’ Bill said.
He heard the snort of disapproval from Clara because she had less time for Pat Reilly than Marion had. ‘You can be as scornful as you like,’ he snapped, ‘but Pat Reilly at least has as much courage as the next man, for we all know that what we’re going to be involved in will be no picnic.’
Marion knew it wasn’t, and while she had exercised her right to say something to Bill on the subject, she hated her mother criticising him so, and in front of the children too. Anyway, she knew the die was cast. As she got to her feet, she said to her mother, ‘There’s no point in going on and on about it now, Mammy. The decision has been made and Bill has told you why he made it and that’s an end to it as far as I’m concerned.’
Bill looked at Marion with astonishment.
She never stood up to her mother, but she had suddenly thought that if Bill wasn’t going to be around, it was time she developed some backbone and she was far too old to allow herself to be browbeaten by her mother.
‘And if we’ve all finished, shall we clear up here so that the children can eat?’ she went on. ‘I’m sure they think their throats have been cut.’
Still Clara said nothing, but the atmosphere could have been cut with a knife as, with a sniff of disapproval, she rose from the table. She left the room in silence, outrage and anger showing on every line of her body.
‘Methinks it’s a little frosty on the Western Front this evening,’ Bill commented quietly, and both Richard and Sarah had to bite their lips to stop their laughter escaping.
‘Why are you putting those horrible black curtains up at the windows?’ Magda asked her mother a few days later.
‘We have to, and that’s all there is to it,’ Marion said from her precarious stance on the dining chair. ‘They have to go up at all the windows.’
‘Even ours?’ Magda said. ‘Our bedrooms and that?’
‘Fraid so.’
‘But why?’
‘So the enemy aircraft won’t see us, that’s why,’ Tony said.
‘How do you know that?’ Marion asked sharply.
‘Jack told me.’
‘He would.’
‘Well, he’s right, ain’t he?’ Tony said.
Marion sighed. She knew that she couldn’t protect her children with a load of lies – the time was past for that. They had a right to know what might happen if the country went to war. She said, ‘Yes, Tony, Jack is right.’
And then Tony turned to his younger sisters and said, ‘Jack told me that enemy aircraft will carry bombs that they’ll drop on us and try and blow us all up.’
‘They won’t, will they, Mom?’ Missie said, and Marion could hear the nervous wobble in her voice.
She knew Missie and Magda wanted an assurance that she couldn’t give them and so she got off the chair and put her arms around each of them as she answered carefully. ‘No one knows yet what the Germans will do when the war begins, but your dad is having someone come to look at our cellar in the next couple of days, and if necessary they will reinforce it and then Hitler and his planes can do his worst and we will be as safe as houses, especially if it is pitch black here, because then the German pilots wouldn’t know where to drop their bombs, would they?’
‘Won’t they see by the streetlights?’ Magda asked.
‘No, because they won’t be on either.’
‘Ooh,’ Missie said, ‘it will be real scary to go out then.’
‘It will take some getting used to,’ Marion conceded. ‘But if that’s how it must be then that’s how it must be.’
By the time they were ready for bed that night, all the horrid black curtains were hung at the windows, but not before Sarah had crisscrossed tape on the glass. She saw the twins’ eyes upon her and explained, ‘If the bombs do fall, then this prevents the glass from flying into the room.’
Magda imagined bombs exploding loud enough and near enough to blow out a person’s windows. She shuddered in sudden fear as she said, ‘So this is just in case as well?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Some of the kids at school are going to the country the day after tomorrow, in case there’s a war,’ Magda said.
‘Yeah,