Chapter 11
It had started snowing when Bobby stepped into the street. The stuff fell in huge wet blobs, quickly absorbed by the yellow slush that already filled the gutters and slunk into the cracks in the pavement.
It was a question of where she was needed most. Could her humble, unimportant presence really help win the war?
It seemed such a far-fetched idea, but if this war had taught people anything, it was that little things could make a big difference.
All the previously unthought-of household rubbish collected for salvage; the rows of beans and peas that occupied her friend Topsy’s former flowerbeds; the frequent reminders about the danger of one misplaced ‘careless talk’ whisper.
If Bobby was freeing up a man to join the fight, perhaps she really would be making a bigger difference than the mundane work of typing and filing might make it seem.
But even so – what would be the cost to her family?
Mary and Reg had been adamant she ought to apply for postponement, and her father had looked so forlorn and helpless when she had told him she might have to go.
But then Bobby thought of Charlie. What if she did get out of it, and he could never forgive her?
What if it created a rift between them that would poison their marriage before it had even begun?
And if anything were to happen to him in action – if he were injured, or, God forbid, killed – would she ever be able to forgive herself?
Bobby’s brain was spinning, and it point-blank refused to give her any answers to the question that preoccupied her.
She put it to one side as she walked to the tram stop that would take her to Great Horton, where Don and his family lived.
Perhaps her friend’s ever-reassuring presence would help her find the calm she needed to think it through.
Don’s wife Joan answered the door. She looked red-cheeked and flustered, in a floury pinny with her sleeves rolled up and her hair escaping from under a headscarf. Baby Robert was sleeping over one shoulder, limp as a rag doll.
‘Oh! Bobby,’ Joan said, trying to tame her escaping hair. ‘Come in out of the cold, love. We hadn’t expected you. Does Don know you’re in town? He’s just sitting down to tea.’
‘Um, no,’ Bobby said as she stepped into the hall. ‘Sorry, I would have telephoned, but it was rather short notice. I was summoned for a medical at the WAAF–ATS recruiting centre. I wanted to call in and say goodbye before Don left.’
Joan smiled. ‘So they got you as well, did they?’
‘Afraid so,’ Bobby said, smiling too. ‘Are you all right, Joan? You seem all at sixes and sevens.’
‘I’m all over the place thanks to his nibs here,’ Joan said, nodding to the sleeping baby.
‘You’d think butter wouldn’t melt, kipping there so peacefully, but this is the first time he’s shut his eyes all day – and his gob.
What with trying to keep him happy, get Don’s things ready for when he leaves on Tuesday and finish this batch of tarts for the WVS cake sale tomorrow, I’ve scarce had time to draw breath.
It’s young folks’ work, this mothering malarkey. ’
‘Can I help with anything? I expect you want your tea too. I’m happy to mind my little godson while you eat.’
‘Oh, you’re a blessing sent from God,’ Joan said gratefully, gathering up the little bundle of baby and handing it over.
‘As soon as Sal’s finished her food, she can take him upstairs.
Then if you really want to do me a favour, you can take that husband of mine out for a drink while I finish baking.
I wish the paper could have kept him on until it was time for him to go.
There’s nothing worse than husbands for getting under your feet when you’re busy – you’ll learn that soon enough when you’ve one of your own. ’
‘Yes, of course. I mostly came to say farewell, but there is something I’d like to talk to him about if he can spare me an hour.’
‘Come this way.’ Joan ushered her into the living room, where a fire was burning. ‘Pull up a chair. I’ll send Sal in for Robbie in ten minutes.’
Bobby took a seat at the hearth and settled little Robert in her lap. He was sleeping soundly, swaddled in a knitted blanket with eyes scrunched up tight against the electric light, but he instinctively gripped Bobby’s finger when she placed it on the palm of his hand.
‘Ow,’ she whispered, smiling. ‘That’s some grip you have, young Master Sykes.’
The baby screwed up his face as if in agreement, letting out a little raspberry through pursed lips, and Bobby laughed.
He was so tiny still, with just six short weeks of life in which to have experienced the world. So very, very delicate and precious. How must the world look to those fresh and wondering eyes?
It made Bobby think of Lilian, and the little bundle she would soon be nursing.
Poor Joan had looked so tired as she struggled to manage her home and a demanding baby, and she had both her daughter Sal and a part-time home help to spread the load.
Lil would have nobody – nobody except Tony, jobless at home, and as Joan had rightly pointed out, even the best husbands were a burden when they were stuck in the house all day.
How Bobby wanted to stay at home, and be there for her sister!
If Lil was in Bradford, Bobby could come at weekends to give her sister badly needed respite from domestic cares.
But if Lilian ended up in Liverpool as Tony was threatening, and Bobby was drafted Lord knew where with the Air Force, the sisters might not see one another for months on end.
She ran a thumb tip over the baby’s tender, downy cheek, stroking his cottongrass-soft black hair with her other hand.
Don and Joan’s little wartime blessing. Lilian’s baby would be just such another.
It made Bobby’s heart swell to watch his tiny chest rise and fall: the soft, rhythmic breathing and cheeks rosy with a healthful glow.
This was what it was all for, wasn’t it?
The war. The lives being lost, and the men and women sacrificing everything to keep the enemy at bay.
Men who bled and shed blood, who fought and killed and died.
It was all to make a better world for little ones such as this.
When Bobby looked into the sleeping features of her godson and felt the instinctive lightness of heart that his chubby fist around her finger produced, she felt that she, too, would sacrifice anything if it only meant a world at peace for these tiny ones to grow up in.
She was pulled from her reverie by the arrival of Don and Sal.
Sal, who was still in her school uniform, waved enthusiastically at her. ‘Hullo, Miss Bancroft. Mam said you’d come. D’you remember me?’
Bobby smiled to see the girl so jolly and confident. She had been wondering if Don’s imminent mobilisation might be upsetting for his sensitive little daughter, but Sal looked full of health and happiness.
Sal Sykes wasn’t so little any more either, a growth spurt meaning the nearly twelve-year-old girl was now up to Bobby’s shoulder.
Her dark hair, which had been in two plaits the last time Bobby had seen her, was now styled in the same side-swept waves as the young Princess Margaret Rose wore.
When Bobby remembered the pale, anxious little waif who had almost been made ill through bullying when she had been evacuated to a boarding school in the Dales, she felt she wouldn’t have recognised the girl.
‘Of course I remember you, Sal,’ she said. ‘You look ever so grown up since I saw you last.’
‘Huh. Growing up too fast, I reckon.’ Don lowered his voice and told Bobby in a stage whisper, ‘Our Sal’s courting.’
Sal blushed. ‘Dad, stop. I am not.’
‘Tell that to the baker’s boy. Half an hour you were hanging over the fence chelping at him yesterday, and in the cold an’ all. The bread were half-frozen by the time your mam got her hands on it. I’ve a good mind to come out next time and ask him what his intentions are.’
The girl’s cheeks looked like tomatoes now. ‘Oh my word, Dad, please don’t! Jimmy’ll never talk to me again.’
Bobby laughed. ‘Don, don’t tease her. You know you’ll do no such thing.’
‘Aye, well, happen not. Sal, take your little brother upstairs and settle him in his cot. Your mam needs a rest.’
Sal approached to take the baby. Bobby felt the little fist slip from her finger as she reluctantly handed him over, and Sal tucked him expertly into the crook of her arm. She gave Bobby a wave before heading upstairs.
Don sighed. ‘She’ll be courting in earnest before long, and me halfway across the country not able to keep an eye on her.
We’ve broken the back of this thing now, I hope, but still, it don’t look like there’s much chance of it ending any time soon.
Scares me to death, Bobby, I don’t mind telling you. ’
Bobby stood up. ‘Do you really believe that?’
‘What?’
‘That we’ve broken the back of the war.’
‘Why, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know. You keep hearing people say it’ll all be over by summer or winter or next spring, but nothing seems to change.
Boys are still dying, food’s still short.
Chamberlain told us to prepare for a three-year war, didn’t he?
Well, it’ll be three years come September and there’s still no end in sight. ’
‘Ah, but now we’ve got the Yanks.’
‘Yes, and Hitler’s got Europe. All those resources, as much slave labour as he needs.
Anyhow, Churchill certainly doesn’t think it’s over.
He was forecasting another invasion attempt in the spring.
’ She pressed her palms to her eyes. ‘It’s the sheer on and on-ness that frays the nerves.
It feels like it’ll carry on this way forever, Don. ’
Don sighed. ‘Maybe you’re right and I’m kidding myself.
Can’t face the thought of being gone for years; of coming home to find a daughter almost grown and a little boy who don’t remember me.
It feels like Sal’s at that age where she changes every day.
By the time they let me come home for good, happen she’ll be a young woman and I’ll have missed the last precious bit of her childhood.
’ He sighed again before summoning a smile.
‘Same for dads the country over, I suppose. Anyhow, I wasn’t expecting to see you today. ’
He shook her hand in a frank, manly fashion that made Bobby laugh.
‘I wasn’t expecting to have to come,’ she said. ‘Still, I’m glad to have the chance to say goodbye.’
‘Been for a medical, have you? They’ll have the whole bloody country in the forces before long.’
‘Joan says I’ve to take you for a pint and get you out from under her feet.’
‘That, young Bobby, is just what I need,’ Don said, clapping her on the shoulder. ‘It’s been driving me dotty hanging around this place all day. I’m not a man idleness sits well on, but that’s all I can be in this weather. Can’t even do a bit o’ gardening.’
‘Let’s go to the Swan.’
‘The Swan? That’s nearly a half-hour’s walk. There’s the Brewer’s not fifty yards away.’
‘I know, but… I feel that I’d like to go to the Swan. For old times’ sake.’
He smiled. ‘Feeling nostalgic, are we? I know what you mean. All right, button up and let’s go.’