As the cinema house lights went up and the strains of the National Anthem filled the hall, May Robinson and her mam rose from their seats and stood to attention. May began to sing but the cigarette smoke that fogged the air caught in her throat. She coughed before trying to carry on, ‘God save our gracious king… long live our noble king…’
Mam, standing at her side, turned to her daughter and her plump face split into a fond smile. She too sang along, ‘God save the king…’
When the music faded, folk began collecting their possessions – mackintoshes, umbrellas, handbags – and made for the aisles. May helped Mam on with her black woollen coat, which reeked of mothballs, and, checking they’d left nothing behind, they joined the throng heading to the Regal’s front of house, where they waited with the rest for the doors to open. The lights went out and the foyer was plunged into darkness. May and her mam followed the queue for the exit.
‘Eee, that film did me the power of good,’ Mam said in an enthralled undertone, ‘I’ve never laughed so much in an age. Mind you, not that I’ve had anythin’ to laugh about lately… not with that lazy sod drivin’ us to distraction. I swear your da’s getting worse…’ Mam continued, ‘Those two – Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland – with their dancing and singing, were just the tonic I needed.’
Mam began to hum, ‘I Got Rhythm’, as the pair of them inched forward, into the damp air wafting in from the open doorway.
Today was Mam’s birthday. She didn’t expect a fuss, and as far as Dad was concerned, neither did she get one. But May always tried to make her mother’s birthdays special and today was no exception. She’d planned this trip to the flicks and had used her sweet coupons on two ounces of aniseed balls – Mam’s favourite – from the sweetie shop. Sweets, like most household goods, were in short supply and at times simply unobtainable.
‘And another thing… did you know you resemble yon lass in the film? You’ve got the same look about you.’
May was startled and felt her cheeks flush in the dark. Folk all around were absorbed in their own conversations, but she would die if anyone overheard her mother. Fancy being compared to a famous star!
‘Mam… that’s ridic—’
‘Have you looked in the mirror lately?’ May heard the smile in Mam’s voice. ‘With your bonny wavy hair, dark brown eyes and those Cupid’s bow lips, you’re the image of her.’ Mam sniffed indignantly. ‘And though I say so mesel’… with those high cheekbones, you’re far prettier.’
May sensed folk listening in, and looked around shyly, hoping no one was paying too much attention.
‘I’ve got a ma just the same,’ an amused male voice piped up from behind. ‘She’s never happier than when she’s embarrassin’ us.’
Just then May was swept forward by the queue and the moment mercifully passed. Leaving the cinema, she stepped out into the dark and foggy night.
As she waited for Mam, beside her, who fumbled in her battered leather handbag, May heard the voices of the rest of the picture-goers as they receded into the distance.
‘I know I brought it,’ she despaired. There was more rustling as she searched in the seemingly bottomless bag. ‘D’you know I’ve even found me compact that’s been lost for months?’ She let out a troubled sigh. ‘But no torch.’
The night was foggy and claustrophobic. May felt disorientated and Mam’s disembodied voice only helped to increase the illusion. She felt somehow unreal, like when she was a kid and needed to fling her arms around Mam to be comforted by the warmth of her ample body. The blackout had been introduced so that enemy planes wouldn’t realise they flew over built-up areas. Householders hung heavy curtains over their windows; no welcoming light shone from street lamps, and torches, if used, were masked with tissue paper. Bus and car headlamps were also fitted with black discs with a narrow slit arranged to point downward.
‘We’ll manage without.’ May hoped her voice conveyed more conviction than she felt.
‘I know we will, pet, but what use is a torch if I can never find the damn thing?’ Mam’s frustration was clear as she berated herself for leaving such a vital piece of equipment at home. ‘And what use is it painting white stripes on kerbs and lines in the middle of the road if folk can’t damn well see a hand in front of them in this fog…’
That moment a crackle sounded in the air, before a blue spark from the overhead wire of a trolleybus flashed from the roadway.
‘A trolleybus!’ Mam cried. ‘Can you see its number? Hopefully it’s goin’ our way.’
The smell of sulphur lingered in the atmosphere, like just before a thunderstorm, and May thought that it might be caused by the trolley’s spark.
She squinted into the fog but couldn’t see any light from the trolley’s number box. ‘It’s too far away.’
‘I’ll put a hand out,’ Mam called. ‘Maybe the driver might see us and stop.’
King Street, with shops closed and no one about, resembled a ghost town. And in the eerie silence, Mam’s moderately high-heeled shoes clip-clopped as she edged towards the road. She never wore heels, May thought, with a pang. So excited had she been about tonight’s treat, she’d worn her Sunday best rig-out for the occasion, though it was a shabbier Sunday attire than in days past; an aged, dark green felt hat, worn at the heel black lace-up shoes and a limp floral scarf.
The trolley whirred nearer and, sensing it looming in the dark fog, a feeling of foreboding gripped May.
‘Where are you, Mam?’ Like the blind, arms outstretched, she groped into the void ahead.
‘I cannot see a thing, hinny,’ Mam said. ‘But I’m stayin’ put till we catch a trolley… It’s madness to walk home in these conditions.’
Before they’d set out the weather had been fine but it had changed for the worse while they were inside the cinema.
A noise in the air she couldn’t identify caught May’s attention, then a cry of pain.
‘Bugger me…’ came Mam’s perturbed voice. ‘I’ve fallen over the kerb… me ankle hurts like blazes.’
Before May could move, a trolley, its diffused beam a hazy light, silently loomed large out of the wall of fog.
‘My God… Help!’
There was a sickening muffled thud.
‘Mam! Are you all right?’
As May catapulted forward, she knew, with heart-wrenching clarity, that this was the last birthday she and her mother would ever celebrate together.
May was the last to receive a brown pay packet from the floral tray.
‘There you go, pet,’ the lady from the wages section said. ‘The princely sum of forty-two shillings. Divvent spend it all at once, mind.’ Cackling, she handed the pay packet to May and hurried away.
The factory hooter blew then; the time was half-past five and it was the end of the ten-hour day shift. Switching off her machine, May collected her bait box, flask and knitting and filed with the rest of the machinists down to the basement cloakroom. She shrugged out of navy overalls and took off her peaked hat whose fishnet covered her glossy, chestnut-brown hair. She put on her coat and checked her handbag for her identity card. She knew her number off by heart.
Following the rest of the lasses to the exit, May punched her time card and made her way outside into the night’s oppressive darkness to the bicycle shed where, by the light of a dim torch, she unlocked her bicycle chain. She manoeuvred the Raleigh past the low, camouflaged buildings and made her way down to the plant’s main gate.
As she waited in the snaking queue, a voice beside her piped up, ‘Is that you, May? How you gettin’ on, hinny?’
May recognised the voice of Bertha Cuthbertson, someone she used to work with. Bertha, who’d worked at the factory since the beginning of the war, was now supervisor on a different production line.
May, forever truthful, was stuck for what to say. Since Mam’s accident, life had been one long day of sorrow after another.
She managed to mutter, ‘I miss Mam.’
‘Aw! Of course. How insensitive can a body be?’ Bertha whispered, her tone exuding sympathy, ‘You’ll still be floored after the tragedy.’
‘Yes. I am.’
Bertha squeezed her arm.
May’s thoughts turned to the one person she wanted to be here to comfort her. But Billy was away abroad fighting for his country.
‘Next,’ the Local Defence Volunteer on the gate barked.
As she stood before the LDV’s cabin, the dim light from his torch waved her past, and May relaxed. She constantly worried she might be searched and that somehow she might have made a ghastly mistake – a lapse of concentration, maybe – and some item from work would be found in her possession. She could only guess what the LDV bloke searched for – a precision instrument, cutlery pinched from the canteen or an important document someone could plant on her person to retrieve once she was safely outside the factory gates – and if found, May would forever more be labelled a thief, or worse still, an enemy spy.
‘One of these days, lass, your imaginin’s will get you into trouble,’ Mam’s voice spoke in her head. May’s chin trembled. She sorely missed Mam and couldn’t bear to think back to the day of the accident, and what her mother might have suffered.
Once outside the sprawling factory grounds, May mounted her bike and made for home. These dark days before Christmas she craved natural light but, like a mole underground, she felt she lived her life in darkness.
May’s work at the factory was making precision instruments for aeroplanes. The job was monotonous, and she worked in a dungeon-like machine room beneath mercury vapour lamps that shed misty greenish-white light that hurt her eyes.
‘Speed is what’s important,’ the foreman had informed May when she trained. ‘It takes fifteen people working flat out to keep a pilot flying.’
May was proud to be one of those fifteen, but since Mam had died she had a hankering to do something more meaningful. Something that would make a real difference to people’s lives.
As she pedalled in the half-light, May was reluctant to go home. This was the time of day when she had to face reality. Mam wouldn’t be there with a pot of tea to greet her. Mam was gone – dead and buried – never to be seen again. The finality of it left May with a panicky, powerless feeling. She couldn’t face another evening alone in the house reminiscing about Mam and of course… Billy. She constantly worried for his safety and knew that in her present forlorn state she’d rake up not the good times she’d spent with him but the upset and heartache. The trouble was, with no one else in the house, May had too much time to think.
May was worried about Dad because it was only weeks after Mam died and he was never home, his whereabouts a mystery. When Mam was alive, he’d sit in the bay window, jug of ale at his side, expecting to be waited on hand and foot.
‘If you ask me,’ Mam confided on more than one occasion, ‘it’s boxing in his younger days that addled your da’s brain.’
Dad was up and out first thing these days and usually late home at night, but to be truthful May preferred he was getting on with his life to the drunken state he was in when Mam was alive.
Her mind made up, May decided she’d visit her good friend Etty Milne to pass away the evening. She cycled towards the dark and dripping Tyne Dock arches. In the gloom, May’s spirts took a nosedive as scenes from her mam’s funeral played in her mind’s eye.
She remembered the huddle of neighbours that stood at their front door in Templeton Street as May climbed into the black limousine by the kerbside; the whisperings she tried not to hear.
‘Poor lass, did yi’ hear her mam was run over by a corporation trolleybus?’
‘I did. And what I heard was the bus had to be jacked up so’s the workmen could reach the corpse…’
As she was driven to the cemetery, all May could think of was what state a body would be in after being run over by a trolleybus.
The cortège proceeded at a snail’s pace through the cemetery gates and along the pathways and came to a halt at a newly dug grave surrounded by a mound of brown earth. As folk stood like black statues circling the graveside, May recognised the faces of neighbours and friends, seafaring gentlemen that had once boarded at the lodging house Mam ran, and ladies from the Women’s Voluntary Service where Mam helped twice a week at the clothing depot.
Mr Newman, the funeral director, presided over the burial. Dapper in a black suit and bowler hat, he was accompanied, surprisingly, by his wife Ramona Newman – Mam’s sister. The two sisters didn’t get along, but they were relatives, and Mam, after all, believed in family, so maybe it was right that Ramona should be there.
The thought of family brought May’s brothers to mind. Serving abroad in the forces, they couldn’t attend Mam’s funeral. Thanks be to the Lord, May silently prayed, as, under the circumstances, with emotions running high, there’d no doubt be trouble. Both brothers detested Dad for the way he’d treated their Ma over countless years.
The vicar said prayers then gave, in a detached voice, a speech about Mam. As she listened May was appalled; the person he spoke about wasn’t the Mam she knew but someone humourless and proper who would never use a word of bad language. May’s nerves were in such tatters she almost giggled at the saintly person Mam had become.
Halfway through the ceremony, Dad’s emaciated figure staggered up to the graveside. Dressed in a black wrinkled suit, shiny from wear at the elbows, he teetered to the grave’s edge. May tensed, anxious that in his drunken state he might fall in.
‘Serve the bugger right,’ Mam’s voice said in May’s head.
Dad bent and picked up a sod of earth, which he threw down onto Mam’s wooden coffin. Then, turning on his heel, he departed.
The ceremony over, folk moved away, though some stopped to share condolences and May was touched at how well thought of Mam was.
When everyone was gone, the cemetery silent as the grave Mam would now spend eternity in, May looked out over greenery to the houses way beyond, where folk got on with their everyday lives. She realised life for her would never be the same, and tears spilled from her eyes.
Then a thought struck. Wiping away the tears on her cheeks with the back of a hand, she made purposefully for the cemetery gates.
She had Derek to take care of. A warm protective glow spread over May’s chest.
Only eight, Derek was the baby of the family, After the last terrible raid earlier in the year when buildings were blown to smithereens and fires raged against the early morning sky, Mam had declared, ‘It’s time Derek was safe and oot o’ harm’s way.’ So he was evacuated miles away in the country to a place called Allendale where he was billeted on a farm.
The day of his departure, May watched with Mam as the train carrying Derek, his tear-stained face pressed against a window, steamed out of South Shields station. As far as May was concerned, the bairn was too little to be sent to live with strangers – but what could she do? As a sister her opinion didn’t count.
Derek hadn’t been told about Mam’s death yet as that responsibility lay with Dad. But the oversight preyed on May’s mind. As she steered the bicycle through the damp arches and up the road towards Chichester roundabout, a car horn hooted, giving May such a fright, she nearly toppled from her bicycle. Blimey, she thought, making an apologetic face at the driver; she’d been so immersed in her thoughts she’d swerved right in front of him.
‘Lass, yer not safe to be let loose on the road,’ she heard Mam’s voice say.
Cycling up Dean Road’s incline, May passed the shops – newsagent’s, chemist’s, butcher’s – and rows of terraced houses, until she reached Whale Street. She turned left and stopped outside number twelve: Etty Milne’s two-bedroom downstairs flat.
‘Oh, hello, May…’ said Etty, when she answered the door, ‘I didn’t expect you tonight. Come in, but mind, ours is a madhouse tonight.’
Seeing her friend, May’s eyes welled. That’s why she rarely went out these days; her emotions were so ragged she cried at the drop of a hat. As the overwhelming knowledge that larger-than-life Mam was gone forever and May now had no one, loneliness washed over her. She couldn’t fathom how to go on because Mam had always been there to advise her.
‘Eee, I won’t come in, not if you’re busy.’ May’s tone was gruff. ‘I’ll be in the way…’
Etty, as though she knew her friend’s thoughts, smiled sympathetically. ‘Don’t be daft. I could do with some grown-up company.’
‘Only, if you’re sure.’
Etty was a true friend; even though she had her hands full with a home and two bairns she was always there for May in time of need. There were times Etty went quiet and seemed withdrawn, as though uncomfortable in May’s presence, but May decided to let it be. For Etty could do no wrong and she’d always be May’s best mate. As Etty led the way along the dim passageway, May heard a baby’s relentless shrill cry coming from the back bedroom.
She decided she wouldn’t outstay her welcome, knowing that Etty had troubles of her own to contend with. In the kitchen-come-living room stood a toddler staring in wide-eyed fascination through the bars of a wooden playpen, handmade toys all around her.
‘Don’t let Norma’s goody-two-shoes look fool you.’ Etty made a grim face at the toddler. ‘She’s been a little devil today.’
‘How come?’ May eyed the fresh-faced, blue-eyed child who appeared the picture of innocence.
‘Temper tantrums.’ Etty held out a hand for May’s coat. ‘Little minx is spoiled rotten by her upstairs.’ She raised her eyes heavenward to the flat above where her mother-in-law lived. ‘And seeing how I’ve got the two bairns to look after… I’ve neither the time nor the energy to do much about it.’
Etty’s beloved sister, Dorothy, had been killed in a raid earlier in the year, when the area was bombed with great loss of life. Etty’s niece, Victoria, was only two weeks old at the time. Victoria’s dad had been lost at sea when his ship was torpedoed and so she was orphaned. Etty and her husband had taken the bairn into their home.
‘What’s wrong with Victoria?’
‘Teething. She’s got a tooth poking through her lower gum.’ Etty puffed her cheeks out in exasperation. ‘You’d think she’d sleep. She’s had me up all night.’
Etty’s face was bloated with tiredness, with dark swathes beneath her hazel eyes.
‘I’ll rock her if you like,’ May volunteered.
‘You’re very good with bairns and that’s most kind, but no… I don’t want her to get used to being picked up.’ Etty grimaced ruefully at Norma in the playpen. ‘That’s what happened to this one.’
Knowing she was being spoken about, the toddler threw back her head and giggled, showing off pink gums and a row of tiny white teeth.
Etty shook her head and grinned. ‘Come on… I’ll make us a cuppa. Mind you, I wish it was sherry, there’s a drop left in the bottle that I’m saving for Christmas. I’m sorely in need of it’ – she pulled a mock face of regret – ‘but now is not the time when I’ve got the bairns to take care of.’
Etty took the whistling kettle from the hob and traipsed down the two steps to the minuscule scullery. While she waited, May remembered when Derek was a baby. If he had a disturbed night, it was May who woke and rocked him in her arms while Derek stared up at her with those enormous blue knowing eyes. She was never happier than when taking care of him and making sure he was content. May recoiled from the memory. What was she doing? Like a door slamming, she closed her mind on the past. Those times when Derek was little and vulnerable were too painful to contemplate.
‘How many times have I told yi’…’ Mam’s voice rebuked her, ‘it’s unhealthy to dwell on the past.’
Thing was, May thought as she sank heavily and helplessly into the couch, the voice in her head always spoke the truth.
She looked up and was surprised to see Etty standing before her, as she hadn’t heard her friend return. Etty held a china cup of tea in each hand, her face etched with concern.
‘Remember when Dorothy died and you never left my side?’ Etty said. ‘You told me I could shout and scream if I wanted to, that it was what you’d do if it were your loss?’
May was taken aback, because Etty never mentioned her sister, or the time Dorothy was killed in the street by a bomb. She nodded.
‘Well… since your Mam died you’ve done no such thing. You refuse to speak a word about her. Believe me, bottling up your feelings will do you no good and you’ll make yourself ill.’
‘You should talk,’ May replied, with an honesty she could never help.
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Since when do you talk about Dorothy?’
Etty appeared indignant and parted her lips as if to speak. Then at a loss to know what to say, she closed them again.
‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’ May took the tea her friend offered. ‘I go wobbly inside if anyone mentions Mam’s name. I worry I’ll start bawling me eyes out and never stop.’
‘It’s still raw with me. Even thinking of Dorothy is too painful.’
‘It’s like you’re broken inside, isn’t it? And no matter how you hard you try you can’t fix it.’
Etty nodded. She sat down on the couch and, side by side, they sipped their tea.
May counted in her head. ‘It’s only five months since Dorothy died… but it feels like forever since I’ve seen her.’
Etty’s chin quivered. ‘That’s the worst. If only she could visit for a minute.’ She paused. ‘I used to hear her voice in my head.’
‘Eee, I’m the same with Mam. And I’m sure she’s watching over us.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Little things… like me bait tin keeps falling from the table for no reason. Mam was always nagging us to wash it straight away after work so I’d have more time of a morning. Then the fireguard… it topples over when I’m nowhere near it. I get this strong feeling Mam’s in the room, reminding us to put the guard in front of the fire before I go to bed.’
Etty’s eyes held a faraway gaze. She smiled, sadly. ‘It’s good talking about it. Mind you, anyone else would think we’re barmy.’
They sat in silence together and it occurred to May that the baby in the next room had settled and stopped crying.
Etty, her expression thoughtful, continued, ‘I mean, it could be just the imaginings of a fraught and overworked mind, but I’d like to think it’s evidence of something more…. it gives me hope for our loved ones.’
By, Etty was clever. That was exactly how May felt but she didn’t have the skill to express her thoughts into words.
Etty smiled fondly at May. ‘You’re such a good friend, May. You’ve got such a caring nature.’
May was saved embarrassment when Norma started to whinge; Etty rose and picked up her daughter from the playpen, carrying her on her hip over to the couch where she sat with the bairn on her knee. Staring into space, she cuddled the toddler against her chest, curling blonde strands of her hair around a forefinger.
A thought appeared to strike her and she turned to May. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask… what about Derek? Has he been told yet?’
Anxiety rose in May’s chest and she could barely breathe. They’d been over this before. Etty was critical because Derek hadn’t attended Mam’s funeral. But Etty wasn’t aware of the complications. Of course, May yearned to see Derek but decisions had to be made first about the future. Since Mam’s death she’d been so immersed in grief and misery that nothing else registered, and May was incapable of making plans.
‘It might help the poor lad take his mam’s death in,’ Etty had told her. ‘You don’t want him criticizing your decision not to let him come to the funeral when he’s older.’
May knew Dad wouldn’t get involved as Derek’s welfare had never been any concern of his – and this lack of care had broken Mam’s heart and caused many a row between the couple.
‘I won’t have you drivin’ Derek away like you did your other sons,’ Mam would tell him.
The thought of Derek turning against May was too much to bear. Etty was right; Derek needed to know about Mam – and now.
She asked Etty, ‘What if I write to the couple he’s billeted with and ask them to explain the situation?’
Derek lived with an older couple, a Mr and Mrs Talbot, whose two adult girls weren’t interested in the farm and had flown the nest.
‘Sounds like you’re shying away from your responsibilities, if you ask me.’
‘I wouldn’t… honest… not for the world. I only want what’s best for Derek.’
Etty, tight-lipped, didn’t answer. She smoothed Norma’s cotton smock over her chubby knees.
As May thought of the little lad, the heady little-boy smell of him, the desire to see him forced her to decide. May had sent Derek occasional letters ever since he was evacuated. And on his birthday, she’d included a ten-shilling note that she’d saved in the sixpenny-and-shilling jar. Derek always replied, short perfunctory replies as though it was something he’d been made to do – May smiled – which was probably the case.
‘I’m going to ask for time off and go and see Derek and tell him about Mam meself.’
‘You’re doing the right thing,’ Etty told May. ‘And if you ask me, the factory owes you leave.’
Only two days after her mam’s accident May had turned up for work, and Etty thought the supervisor callous for not sending her home.
‘I don’t want to be in the house on me own,’ May had confessed at the time.
Now, Etty agreed her friend was probably right. With her dad never in the house, May was best off in the company of the other machinists.
‘If you do ask for time off, don’t take no for an answer,’ Etty said. ‘With this war on, workers are just machines. Even the ample food they serve up in the canteen isn’t out of the kindness of managers’ hearts but to feed you so production goes up.’
A look of shock passed over May’s face and Etty felt ashamed of her cynical attitude. May had such a kind soul but how far would her forgiving heart extend if she knew the true extent of Etty’s betrayal?
Flustered, she replied, ‘Sorry, May… I’m just a bit down. With Christmas around the corner and—’
‘It’s fine, I understand… I feel the same way after losing Mam.’ . . .
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