Love Me Tender. Anne Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ an impatient movement on the bed. ‘We’ve discussed this already,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t keen on the weans going to strangers and you agreed with me.’

      ‘Yes,’ Barry said, ‘I did, but…look, everyone knows Hitler is working towards invasion. However you look at it, Dunkirk was a defeat, and he’ll think we’re crushed and now is the time to attack the cities. Then, when we’re demoralised and depressed, as he thinks, he’ll invade.’

      ‘How d’you know all this?’

      ‘It stands to reason, Kath,’ Barry said.

      ‘But why Birmingham?’

      ‘Oh, use your loaf,’ Barry cried impatiently. ‘Birmingham is crucial to the war effort and is bound to be targeted.’

      Kathy thought a little and knew that Barry had a point. Everyone was aware of Birmingham’s contribution to the war effort. There was the Vickers factory which made Spitfires then pushed them across the road to Castle Bromwich aerodrome to be flown south; and the BSA factory turning out military motorbikes and guns. Even Cadbury’s had drastically cut their production of chocolate, and much of the workforce was packing cordite into rockets, while Dunlop made most of the tyres for the planes and military vehicles, and the car factories were busy making tanks.

      ‘Hitler will want to flatten Birmingham,’ Barry said. ‘You must see that.’

      ‘I can see he’d want to, but we’re two hundred miles from the coast.’

      ‘And what d’you think that is in a plane?’ Barry demanded angrily.

      ‘We’ve got the cellar, we’ll be all right.’

      ‘Oh, fine,’ Barry said sarcastically. ‘That’s all right then. And who’s to see to our weans when you have the baby? Rose or Maggie, who’ll have their own hands full, or your ma, who’ll be run off her feet looking after you all? And what about when the weans are at school?’ Barry went on. ‘Or out playing in the streets somewhere, or down the park? Can you protect them then?’

      ‘I won’t send my weans to strangers,’ Kathy said stubbornly.

      Barry sighed in exasperation and said, ‘Look, Kathy, the chap in the last bed goes by the name of Barraclough – Chris Barraclough. They’re monied people, or were, but their father died some years ago. There’s just Chris and a younger brother, David – he’s away at school – and the mother wants to do her bit and open her home up to people from the cities who may need to escape for a while. She had evacuees before, in nineteen thirty-nine, but they went back when no bombs fell.’

      ‘Very nice of her, I’m sure,’ Kathy put in sarcastically. ‘But to me, they’re still strangers.’

      ‘Talk to Chris, he can put it better than me.’

      To humour Barry, Kathy went to find Chris Barraclough. He was due to be discharged in a day or so and was sitting in a wheelchair with a rug over his knees, reading the paper. Kathy was surprised at how young he was. He had an open, honest kind of face, one you could trust somehow. He was a handsome boy too, with regular features, a full mouth, a firm chin and deep-blue eyes with dark lashes. His hair, regulation short, was blond, but the Brylcreem made it look darker. At Kathy’s approach he put aside his paper and gave her such a beautiful smile, her heart flipped in surprise.

      ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to ask who you are. Barry has a photograph of you; he’s shown it to everyone in the ward, I think. I feel as if I know you already, and may I say, Mrs O’Malley, the photograph does not do you justice.’

      Kathy flushed, not used to gallantry and unable to deal with it. ‘Mr…Mr Barraclough,’ she stammered.

      ‘Oh, Chris, please,’ the young man said. ‘And may I call you Kathy?’

      Kathy gave a shrug and a smile. ‘Everyone else does,’ she said.

      ‘Well then, so will I.’ He regarded the woman in front of him and thought her very beautiful, and Barry a lucky chap. Her pregnancy had lent a bloom to her skin, and her eyes were so large and dark brown you felt you could drown in them. It seemed criminal to him that war would be waged on such as the woman before him in all the industrial cities of Britain; judging by the atrocities in Poland, none were too young, old or infirm to experience Nazi brutality.

      ‘My mother has a house in a small village in Herefordshire,’ he began, when Kathy explained what she’d come to see him about. ‘It’s a rambling old place, far too big for Mother now she’s on her own, but she loves it. You would love it too, I know, even if only for a week or two. It has rolling hillsides dotted with sheep, forest land and the River Wye and its tributaries. It truly is idyllic, and once you’re there, you’ll forget there’s a war being waged anywhere.’ He smiled and went on. ‘I’m off myself soon for a week of pampering and spoiling from my dear mother before I report for active service again.’

      ‘And what makes you think your mother would welcome my weans?’ Kathy asked quite sharply.

      ‘She likes children,’ Chris said disarmingly. ‘Apparently she wanted a houseful, but my father was an officer in the Great War and was badly injured internally and externally. Over the years the old wounds gave him much trouble – in fact, I can never remember him as a fit, well man; he always seemed to be an invalid. He died when my young brother David was a year old.’

      ‘How old is your brother now?’

      ‘Thirteen,’ Chris said. ‘And I’m twenty. I went from boarding school to the army. Mother was a bit upset, she thought I’d go to university first – keep me safe, as it were – but I didn’t want to skulk at home, you know. Now she’s worried for David, who is keeping his fingers crossed that the war won’t be over before he’s through school.’

      ‘You say your mother wanted lots of children,’ Kathy said, ‘but both you and your brother went away to school. What can she know about having children around her all day?’

      ‘We didn’t go away till we were turned eleven,’ Chris explained. ‘David has only been boarding for just over two years, and unfortunately that coincided more or less with me joining up. Mother is so lonely now, though she seldom complains. All her life she’s longed for a daughter; she’d love yours.’

      ‘Maybe,’ Kathy said. ‘But I don’t like my children going to people I don’t know, however kind and well-off they are.’

      ‘Oh, but you will go with them, surely?’

      ‘No, I’ve explained to Barry,’ Kathy said. ‘There’s no way I can go.’

      ‘Then send your children before the bombs come,’ Chris pleaded. ‘I can vouch for their happiness there.’

      ‘No one can do that, Mr Barraclough,’ Kathy said, but she accepted the address that he scribbled down, and promised to think about it.

       FIVE

      Back home, the place was in uproar, and Kathy was delighted to hear that Sean, Michael and Con had been in touch. They were all safe and sound and would be home for a week’s leave as soon as they were allowed, but it was nearly ten days before they arrived. It СКАЧАТЬ