Orphans of War. Leah Fleming

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       3

       Victoria Station, Manchester, September 1940

      Gloria Conley tugged her little brother along the platform, trying to keep up with her mother, who was rushing through the crowds on Victoria Station, dodging kitbags slung over shoulders. Sid kept tripping over men sitting on the platform. The place smelled of steam and smoke and smelly armpits, but it was so exciting to be up close to those big iron monsters. There’d been so much to see since they got off the Kearsley bus into town. It was the longest journey she’d ever had, but Sid was whining about his ear hurting. Where were they going? Gloria hoped it was a trip to the seaside.

      ‘Now you stay put, while I get you some sweeties,’ smiled Mam, who was all dolled up in a short jacket and summer frock with a silly little beret with a feather stuck on the side. The soldiers wolf-whistled when she passed and shouted, ‘Give us a kiss, Rita Hayworth!’ Mam wiggled her bum, enjoying every minute of the attention, for she looked so pretty with her shoulder-length red hair and kiss curls.

      Gloria was gripping Sid’s wrist for dear life in case they got swept away in the rush. As the carriage doors opened, bodies poured out with suitcases and parcels, and porters rushed around with trolleys. Gloria could hear whistles blowing and the smell of soot went up her nose.

      Mam soon came back with Fry’s chocolate bars and fizzy pop in a bottle. They were going on a journey, that’s all Gloria had been told, and they had to be good.

      Since the telegram came last week, Mam had been acting funny There’d been tears, and the usual aunties sitting round smoking and drinking stout. Something bad had happened: not the coppers banging on the door of their two up and two down in Elijah Street, looking for Uncle Sam, who had run away from the war: not the welfare man coming to see why she’d missed school again: not that nosy parker from two doors down who didn’t like the gentlemen callers banging the door at all hours. It was all to do with the ‘war on’.

      ‘His dad’s copped it good and proper this time and won’t be coming back. What’m I going to do with you two now?’ Mam sighed with a funny look in her eye while they were on the platform. ‘You’ll have to be a big girl and take charge of Sidney. I want more for you than I’ve got here, do you hear? This is no life for kiddies.’ Mam was snivelling and rabbiting on, shoving a letter in her pocket, a letter Gloria couldn’t read because she was still stuck with baby reading and had missed a lot of schooling looking after Sid while Mam slept in.

      ‘Give this to the policeman on the train, or one of them teachers down there, look…with the children. It’ll explain, but no telling fibs, Gloria. Be a good girl. Don’t lose yer gas masks. You’ll be the better without me, love. I’m doing this for your own good.’

      Mam was crying and Gloria just wanted to cling on tight to her cotton frock, suddenly afraid. Something terrible was about to happen at this station. ‘Where’re we going?’ she sobbed. For a girl of well over ten she was the size of a nine-year-old, her face framed in her pixie hood.

      ‘Now, none of that! It’s for the best. I’ve got to do right by you…I’m going to join up and do my bit.’ Mam shoved a clean hanky in her face. ‘Blow!’

      Gloria didn’t understand what she was getting at but Sid was crying and holding his ear. He always had sore ears. He was her half-brother. Not that she knew who her own dad was. His name was never mentioned. The one that got killed was Uncle Jim, Sid’s dad, but he was too young to understand. He could be a right mardy baby when he got one of his earaches.

      Mam shoved them down the platform following the party of school children with little cases and gas masks, but they went into a full carriage. The train was packed, so she hung back suddenly. ‘Damn! We’ll happen wait for the next one coming,’ she said. ‘You’d better go to the lav, Glory. No one wants a kiddie with wet knickers.’

      What was going on? Her life was full of mysteries, Gloria thought, sitting on the big wooden toilet seat in the ladies. There was the mystery of the customers who came to Elijah Street, the aunties who were always popping in, the men who went upstairs day and night to buy.

      What Mam sold was another mystery, but it meant lots of jumping up and down on the bed and sometimes the plaster came down from the living-room ceiling where Gloria had to keep Sid amused.

      She knew Mr Cummings, who came regular as clockwork on Sunday afternoons. When they set off for Clarendon Street Sunday school, he gave them cough drops out of his pocket with fluff on them and told them to hop it. There were others she didn’t like who came for a ‘seeing to’.

      Lily Davidson’s mum was a hairdresser and saw her customers at the kitchen sink. Freda Pointer across the road went with her mam round the doors selling magazines. They were religious.

      Sometimes when Gloria went upstairs, Mam’s bed was all rumpled and messy and smelled of perfume and sweat. ‘What do you do up there?’ she once asked.

      ‘Nothing you would understand, love. I make them better,’ she explained with a smile.

      ‘Like Dr Phipps?’ she asked.

      ‘Sort of. I give them treatments to help their sore backs and aches and pains,’ Mam said, and Gloria felt better after that.

      In the playground of Clarendon Street Juniors she told Freda Pointer that her mother was a doctor and everyone started to laugh.

      ‘My mam says your mam’s a tuppenny tart, a lady of the night and she’ll go to Hell!’

      ‘No, she’s not! She never goes out at night,’ Gloria shouted, knowing it wasn’t exactly true as sometimes she woke up and found the door unlocked and no one in the house but her and Sid. If there was a raid she had to drag him out of bed and under the stairs to the cubbyhole and wait for the all clear. Sometimes she took him to Auntie Elsie’s shelter down the road.

      ‘Hark at ’er, ginger nut. You’re so stupid, anyone can see she’s a tart!’ Freda made everyone laugh and this made СКАЧАТЬ