At his mother’s he was hailed as a conquering hero. She was coming to terms with the death of her two sons and was aware that Hitler had still to be beaten or they would have died in vain. But for now Barry, her eldest and favourite son, was home, and it was a pleasure to fuss over him. Barry enjoyed the spoiling and cosseting and couldn’t help comparing it with Kathy’s attitude. She had always to give Rose a hand, or mind her weans, or sit with Bridie a while, or pop to her mother’s. Everyone had a higher priority in Kathy’s life than her husband, Barry thought, and he was bloody sick and tired of it.
Kathy herself was often bone weary, and yet she tried to help her family as she’d always done and keep a demanding husband happy. It was exhausting for her, and an additional worry was Barry’s appetite. It had always been healthy, but now boredom and inactivity – which had never sat easily on Barry’s shoulders – caused him to eat more. Meat rationing had been introduced in March, and early July found tea rationed to two ounces per person. The allowance of fats had changed too, and now each person was allowed two ounces of cooking fat and four of margarine but only two butter. Barry, being a serving soldier, had had none of these restrictions on his food and found it irksome when he couldn’t have a cup of tea whenever he wanted. Even the foods not yet rationed, like eggs and cheese, were in short supply, and luxury foods like biscuits and cakes were very hard to get hold of at all. Barry refused to acknowledge how difficult it was for Kathy to prepare nourishing meals every day. He accused her of moaning and complaining all the rime, and Lizzie and Danny often heard their parents arguing.
Eventually Barry talked the doctor into signing him off before he was fully fit. Kathy watched him go with a mixture of feelings, including relief, because although she would worry about him away fighting, he’d been difficult to live with, like a bear with a sore head, and she knew life would be more peaceful once he was gone.
As for Lizzie, though she was sorry to see her daddy leave again, she hadn’t understood what had made him so cross and scratchy, even with her and Danny. She was almost ashamed that she felt relief to match her mother’s as she watched him walk away, his kit bag on his shoulder.
But she was glad, after Barry left, that she had the doll, the last present her daddy had bought her. She called her Daisy, not for any reason she could think of except that she looked like a Daisy. Every night she cuddled her tight and told her all her worries and fears, and imagined she was talking to her daddy about it all.
She had a big problem of her own at this time, for her mammy had told her to be nice to Sheelagh. ‘She’s lost her daddy,’ Mammy had said. ‘He isn’t ever coming back. She’ll never see him again; think how awful that would be if it was your daddy.’
Lizzie did, but not for long; it was too terrible a thought to hold in her mind. Sheelagh was hard to be nice to, but she told herself she’d try.
The Saturday after Barry left, Bridie and Kathy sent the two girls outside out of the way, while they talked. Lizzie sat down on the step beside her cousin and watched Danny and Matt, who were playing marbles with a crowd of other young boys further up the street. It was hot and dusty, and Lizzie felt sticky with it, and though both girls had their skipping ropes with them, it was far too warm to skip. Lizzie felt uncomfortable with her cousin because she’d said nothing to her yet about Uncle Pat’s death, and so eventually she said, ‘I’m sorry about your daddy.’
‘No you ain’t.’
Whatever Lizzie had expected Sheelagh to say, it wasn’t those words that she spat out so bitterly. ‘Course I am,’ she said. ‘Everyone is.’
‘No you ain’t. No one cares, and my mammy knows it.’
‘How can you say that? I loved my Uncle Pat,’ Lizzie declared. ‘And my daddy did. Everyone did.’
‘Then why didn’t they look after him?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘They were supposed to look out for one another. That’s what they said when they joined up,’ Sheelagh said.
Lizzie remembered it, but she didn’t know if you could always do that in battles. She knew that lots of others had been killed at Dunkirk as well as her Uncle Pat, and she said so to Sheelagh. ‘My daddy said it was such a mess at Dunkirk, it was a wonder anyone got out alive.’
‘But he did though, didn’t he?’ Sheelagh snapped. ‘And all the others did. Only my daddy was killed, and that wouldn’t have happened if they’d all looked after each other.’
Lizzie was puzzled, unsure of how to argue that point with her cousin. While she was still thinking of a reply, Sheelagh said, ‘Anyway, my mammy said it won’t matter soon. We’re going to lose the war.’
‘No we’re not.’
‘Yes we are. You don’t know anything, you’re only a baby.’
‘I am not.’
‘Oh yes you are, and everyone knows we’re losing,’ Sheelagh said. ‘There’ll be an invasion and we’ll be overrun with Germans, then you’ll see.’
Lizzie didn’t ask what she’d see; she was too frightened by what Sheelagh had said.
‘Then you’ll be sorry,’ Sheelagh went on, ‘’cos do you know what they do to the men in the countries they rule?’
‘No,’ said Lizzie in a scared little voice.
‘They shoot them,’ Sheelagh said in grim satisfaction. ‘They stand them against the wall and shoot them, and then you won’t have a daddy either.’
Lizzie gasped in horror. ‘It’s not true,’ she said. ‘It isn’t. They don’t do that.’
‘Yes they do,’ Sheelagh said, delighted she’d managed to terrify her cousin. ‘They’ve done it already in France, and my mammy told me they do it everywhere.’
‘But they won’t invade us, our air force will stop them,’ Lizzie burst in.
‘They won’t be able to do anything,’ Sheelagh said dismissively.
Both girls knew the war was going badly; everyone knew. It was all that was talked about and it made the adults bad-tempered. Since the evacuation of Dunkirk, the Luftwaffe had been making sporadic raids on coastal towns in an effort to smash their defences and destroy ships, and everyone knew that was just the beginning. Invasion was the word on everyone’s lips. ‘Do you think we’ll be invaded, Mammy?’ Lizzie asked her mother later, desperate for reassurance after her cousin’s revelations.
Kathy sighed. ‘I don’t know, pet. I hope not.’
It wasn’t what Lizzie wanted to hear. ‘We’re not going to lose the war, are we?’ she asked desperately.
‘It’s in God’s hands, pet,’ Kathy said. ‘We must pray about it.’
Lizzie didn’t want it to be just in God’s hands. She thought he’d made a bad enough fist of it already, and she didn’t understand about praying either. The priests and teachers urged them to pray for peace, but what sort of peace? The sort where Hitler did what he wanted, for she couldn’t see him just giving up, and especially now, when most people thought he was winning. She could pray for Britain to win the war, but they couldn’t do that without killing German people, and surely that was wrong too. Anyway, she thought, if God was everywhere, like the priests said, and if he knew everything, why did she have to pray at all? Her mother was no good, Lizzie realised. She was as scared of defeat as Lizzie herself.
The schools broke up and the Battle of Britain began in earnest, and Lizzie found she could go nowhere without having Sheelagh in tow.
‘Don’t be selfish,’