Love Me Tender. Anne Bennett
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realised with a jolt that it was Friday and possibly she too would have been asked to bring back kippers or fish pieces for tea, as they couldn’t eat meat on Fridays. Eggs used to be a good standby, but even they were hard to come by these days. She knew she’d catch it when she got home, but she didn’t care. Even if she was going to be killed at the end of it, she might as well enjoy herself. It was ages since she’d been out somewhere with Maura as they used to, before the war changed everything.
Lizzie did have a few pangs of guilt as they made their way along Sun Street. She was acting totally out of character, for she’d been trained from when she was little to be helpful to others, and it was in her nature to be considerate too, but the last few weeks had been very trying, and made more so by Sheelagh tagging behind her everywhere. Surely I can have one day off? Lizzie thought to herself, and I’m not going just on my own, I’ve got Pete and Nuala with me. She knew in her heart of hearts that her mother wouldn’t see it the same way, but she gave a defiant lift to her head and smiled across to Maura, and Maura, who knew some of Lizzie’s train of thought, said, ‘It’ll be grand, you’ll see.’
It was a tidy step to the Bull Ring, but the girls had done it many a time. Trams cost money, and neither Kathy nor Mrs Mahon were keen on throwing their money about. They set a brisk pace along Bristol Street while Nuala bounced about in her pram and laughed and waved her arms and Peter trotted along beside them holding the pram handle. ‘Isn’t this great?’ Lizzie said. ‘Just the two of us, without my moaning cousin spoiling anything.’
‘She is awful,’ Maura agreed. ‘Why does your mammy make you take her around with you all the time?’
‘Och, who can understand mothers?’ Lizzie said with a shrug. ‘Mammy says it’s because she’s lost her daddy, but I don’t see that hanging on to me helps. I mean, I don’t like her and I never have, and she doesn’t like me.’ She stopped a minute and then went on, ‘I think she sticks to me to be spiteful, because she knows I hate it. She’s always either giving out or moaning at me, and when she’s with her friends at school, she makes fun of me all the time.’
‘Poor you,’ Maura sympathised. ‘How long d’you think your mammy will make you take her about?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lizzie said, turning the pram into Bromsgrove Street, and added gloomily, ‘I hope it doesn’t last till the war ends.’
‘That might not be long, though, mightn’t it?’ Maura said almost in a whisper. She looked about to see if anyone was listening and then said, ‘Some people think we’re going to lose, and soon.’
Hearing Maura say the same thing as Sheelagh caused Lizzie to snap, ‘Don’t be stupid, that’s a crazy thing to say.’
‘No it isn’t,’ Maura said. ‘Everyone thinks there will be an invasion.’
Lizzie couldn’t deny that. ‘It doesn’t mean we’ll lose, though,’ she said obstinately.
She was so upset by Maura unknowingly backing Sheelagh’s theories on the progress of the war that she’d increased the speed she was pushing the pram and was unaware of it until suddenly Pete, unable to take the pace, tripped and pitched forward. He’d skinned both knees and was bawling loud enough to wake the dead. Lizzie bent down and pulled him to his feet, putting her arms around him while she examined his injuries. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said, spitting on the hem of her dress and rubbing the grime gently from his knees with it. ‘It isn’t much. Look.’
Pete looked. He’d stopped crying, but the tears were still visible on his cheeks and lurked on his eyelashes, and Lizzie knew he was liable to start again any minute. ‘They sting,’ he whined.
‘I know,’ Lizzie sympathised. ‘Tell you what, I’ll lift you up on to the pram and you can have a ride, how’s that?’
Pete looked at the pram and then at the length of Bromsgrove Street stretching before them. ‘How much further is it?’ he asked.
‘Still a fair bit,’ Maura told him, and added to Lizzie, ‘But you don’t have to go on as if you were in some sort of race. No wonder Pete fell over. It’s too hot to rush about like that, I’m boiling already myself.’
‘I’ll ride,’ Pete said suddenly, and Lizzie lifted him up on to the pram, thankful he wasn’t going to make more of a fuss. Maura was right, she realised, because as the morning wore on it had become hotter and she was feeling prickly with it already. So with Peter settled at the bottom of the pram opposite his sister, the two girls went at a more leisurely pace.
Lizzie didn’t want to discuss the war any more, so she said to Maura, ‘Tell me about when you was evacuated.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, why didn’t you like it?’ Lizzie asked. ‘’Cos I haven’t ever been to the countryside. What’s it like?’
‘Well, when I was there, everything was always dripping wet,’ Maura said. ‘There weren’t proper pavements, just muddy lanes and soaking wet fields. There were great big cows and smelly pigs and dogs that barked all the time.’
‘Was she nice, the woman you were sent to?’
Maura shrugged. ‘She was all right,’ she said. ‘’Cept she made me take my shoes off at the door, ’cos they were always muddy. She said I needed wellingtons, but I didn’t have none. It was freezing on her lino and kitchen tiles in my socks. It was all right for her, she had big fluffy slippers, but I didn’t.’
Lizzie nodded. She knew her mother had no money for slippers either.
‘Mammy was mad,’ Maura went on. ‘She said I’d catch my death of cold, and it was cold, everything was blinking cold.’
‘What about your brothers?’
‘Oh, Harry and Gerry went to someone else,’ Maura said. ‘It was on a farm and they wanted big strapping boys and they quite liked it, but Mammy took us all back at Christmas.’
‘I’m glad I didn’t go,’ Lizzie said. ‘It sounds horrible.’
‘Well, you didn’t miss much,’ Maura said. ‘And there’s never been any bombs falling either, has there?’
‘No,’ Lizzie said uncertainly. ‘But Daddy said that there will be.’
‘Och, my mammy said if they were going to bomb Birmingham, they’d have done it already,’ Maura said airily. ‘She said we’re safe enough two hundred miles from the coast.’
‘Daddy said something about a landmine flattening the house.’
‘I don’t think that will happen, do you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lizzie admitted. ‘But I hope not.’
They turned into Jamaica Row as they talked and could see the spire of the Bull Ring’s church and Times Furnishing on the corner of High Street. The crowds had increased around them as they neared the Bull Ring, and Lizzie felt the familiar excitement as she turned the pram and looked for a moment at the teeming mass of people on the hill running down towards the Bull Ring proper.
The statue of Nelson surrounded by railings was in the centre, with the barrows selling their wares to the right of it stretching from Bell Street down past Woolworth’s to Edgbaston Street. Smithfield Market and Rag Alley were to the left, and towering above it all was St Martin’s in the Field Church, with all the flower sellers around it.
Lizzie had a job to hold the pram on the steep incline down to the market, and she lifted Pete out to make it easier and he held the pram handle. The cobbled streets gave Nuala a bumpy ride and she seemed to enjoy it, for she squealed in delight.
Once among the thronging crowds, Lizzie was afraid of losing Pete and warned him to stay close with no wandering