Madame Barbara. Helen Forrester

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ acquiesced.

      ‘The main problem is, Barbie, it looks as if we’re not goin’ to get our usual customers. The commercial travellers is all going into the Army, and, if this summer’s any example, the older couples what used to spend their holidays with us don’t seem to be taking holidays any more. So what to do?’

      ‘I don’t know, Mam, but if we don’t fill up this house quickly, it’ll be requisitioned again for something.’

      They sat in silence, staring at their kitchen, once more restored to order.

      Then Barbara said, ‘You’re right, Mam, about the elderly couples not coming. But I wonder if they’d come if we pointed out that if France falls – and it looks as if it might – the South’ll be in range for bombing. We could offer them permanent accommodation well away from it.’

      Her mother slapped her knee. ‘I think you’re right, luv. There’s one or two people as has come up from London, staying in the village already.’

      They had sat down and written to some twenty elderly couples from the South-East of England, who had in times past spent holidays with them. They made Barbara’s point about likely bombing, and the comparative safety of the North.

      The nervous anticipation in the South of being bombed was sufficient. Within two weeks, they had all their eight bedrooms filled, housing a total of seventeen people. Their biggest bedroom held three quarrelsome, complaining old sisters, who proved to be the most trying of their hastily acquired visitors.

      The overwhelmed local housing authority, themselves disorganised by the sudden weight of responsibility thrust upon them by the immediacies of war, decided that they could not very well dislodge such elderly refugees from the South without causing a scandal. They accepted the situation.

      As grossly overworked Phyllis remarked, with resignation, ‘At least this lot knows what being clean means, thanks be to Mary.’

      Phyllis and Barbara agreed that it was advisable to keep the house more crowded than it had ever been, lest the authorities suddenly change their collective mind and try to thrust additional, unwanted guests upon them. And there was always the overriding fear that the Army or the Air Force might requisition the entire property, though this did not happen.

      So, for nearly seven years, as a constant background to their personal grief at the loss of their menfolk, the harassed hostesses faced continuous complaints about the difficulty of climbing stairs; and, though each bedroom had a sink, that there was only one bathroom and three lavatories in the place.

      Regardless of the fact that almost every home in Britain was cold from lack of fuel, running wars were fought between old gentlemen trying to hog the chairs nearest the meagre gas fire in the lounge. Ladies complained of lack of hot water for washing clothes and having baths – even of getting into the bathroom in the first place.

      Accusations regarding the unfair distribution of rationed food, particularly the tiny amounts of sugar, butter, cheese, jam and marmalade, flew back and forth between the little round tables in the dining room. Sometimes, perfectly respectable couples would accuse each other of theft of jam from their private pots, which had been specially provided by Phyllis to ensure fairness.

      Frequently, Phyllis had to intervene in the altercations and point out the minuscule amount of individual rations. It all seemed so stupid to her. There were men like her husband Hugh, victim of a U-boat attack, and George, who would give their lives for them – and they screamed with rage over marmalade!

      Anybody would imagine that they had no one in their families serving in the Forces; yet Phyllis knew that they did.

      When, in 1944, George was killed, Barbara thought the refugees would drive her insane. She was sorely tempted to scream, ‘Shut up! Get out!’ at them, and she wondered how her mother could endure them so patiently.

      When the war ended, most of them lingered for a while. A number had wrecked or damaged homes, which had to be restored before they could move down south again. A few, perhaps because they had been protected for so long from the reality of existence in a drained country, seemed unable to make up their minds what to do, and, meanwhile, had stayed on.

      Particularly in 1947, the worried hostesses had had a real problem finding enough food, rationed or unrationed, to provide three meagre meals a day for the old curmudgeons. They had thankfully said farewell to the last of them at Christmas.

      That same year Barbara and her mother had been very relieved to see the return of some of their usual clientele, commercial travellers. The gentlemen had little to sell. Wholesalers were anxious, however, to keep their company name in front of their old clients, so that, as soon as adequate goods were available, their pre-war share of the market would not be lost.

      Once or twice, thought Barbara, the old folk had been very nice to her. Back in June 1942, when she had married George, they had insisted that Phyllis use some of their points rations, which meant very limited amounts of tinned food, like Spam or golden syrup, to make a wedding breakfast for the young couple.

      In addition, all the ladies had set to work to embroider or knit or crochet little wedding gifts. Even the gentlemen, whom Barbara swore were the laziest bunch of old so-and-sos she had ever met, bestirred themselves. The result was a number of beautifully hand-carved gifts. Though she could no longer bear to look at them because it made her want to cry, she still treasured in her dressing-table drawer three neatly carved wooden spoons made from driftwood found on the shore.

      She went round the lot of them to kiss them in gratitude.

      They had been equally kind when they heard about George’s death; they had all expressed their sorrow at her loss, as those who knew about it had done earlier, when her father was killed. There had not been a single quarrel for at least two weeks.

      During the weeks following the loss of George, two of the residents lost grandsons and at last, it seemed to Barbara, the reality of the war truly came home to them; not even a string of bombs dropped across the Wirral peninsula, nor the news some had received of their homes being damaged or requisitioned had been able to achieve that.

      When the war began, Barbara herself had wanted to volunteer for military service and join the ATS, the Auxiliary Territorial Service. It sounded exciting.

      Her mother would not hear of it. ‘With your dad at sea, I need you. Who else can I turn to?’

      So Barbara, who loved her mam, stayed home.

      When France fell to the Germans, Barbara broached the subject again. But Phyllis still would not hear of it either. Nice girls stayed at home with their mams. ‘And, anyway, wot am I going to do without you, and a house full of old folks to run?’ When her father was torpedoed, her mother was certainly glad to have her there.

      A domestic crisis had occurred when, in December 1942, all married women under the age of forty were called up for war work. Barbara was directed to a contractor who was busy repairing damaged docks in Birkenhead. She worked on shift as a labourer together with one other girl. Her hours were long and the work, with all its lifting and carrying, was very heavy.

      ‘At least it’s better than the ATS,’ Phyllis said, as she rubbed Barbara’s back with surgical spirit. ‘You can sleep in your own bed.’ She imagined that she was being comforting.

      Barbara’s bed was exceedingly cold, especially without George. She shrugged and looked down at her hands, which were rapidly being ruined by hard labour, and felt СКАЧАТЬ