‘Maybe you can’t, but I can,’ Kathy snapped. ‘She knows she has to be understanding to Sheelagh just at the minute.’
‘It’s like being understanding to a rattlesnake.’ Carmel said it under her breath so Kathy didn’t hear, but Lizzie did, and grinned at her young aunt.
‘And you can take that silly smile off your face,’ Kathy said. ‘I’m sure I never said anything to laugh at. You can come across to Rose’s with me to get a few things for the weans for tonight and tomorrow. Bring Nuala and you can change her and make her more comfortable.’
‘We’ll rustle up something to eat,’ Maggie said. ‘We might as well eat together tonight, and Daddy will be in any minute.’
‘Aye,’ Kathy said. ‘Life goes on, and Lord knows when we’ll see Mammy.’
Bridie went for Lizzie that night as she’d known she would, and she stood and took it without a word, feeling it was just punishment, for she felt guilty to be out enjoying herself while her Aunt Rose lay so ill. ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Bridie,’ she said, when eventually the tirade had stopped.
Bridie looked at Lizzie through narrowed eyes, not at all sure that she wasn’t being sarcastic, but she thought she looked suitably chastened. ‘Yes, well,’ she said, ‘I mean, being sorry is all very well, but it was a terrible thing to do. Poor wee Sheelagh cried her eyes out and then—’
Kathy cut in then, deciding enough was enough. ‘The child has said sorry, Bridie,’ she said. ‘Let that be the end of it now. What do you want her to do? Grovel on the floor?’
Lizzie looked at her mother in amazement and Bridie snapped, ‘You just encourage her with that attitude.’
‘Encourage her?’ Kathy exclaimed. ‘It was hardly the crime of the century, Bridie. She went for a wee jaunt to the Bull Ring with a friend, that’s all.’
‘She was supposed to come back for Sheelagh.’
‘There was nothing to stop Sheelagh going along to the Bull Ring on her own,’ Kathy said sharply. ‘She said Lizzie had told her where they were going. Anyway she’s sorry now.’ She looked across to Lizzie and said, ‘You won’t do it again, sure you won’t?’
And Lizzie was certain sure her mammy gave her a huge wink. ‘No, Mammy,’ she said.
Bridie glared at the two of them, but no one cared for that and when she left just afterwards, Lizzie felt she could breathe more easily. Kathy gave a smile and said, ‘Phew! I’m glad that’s over with. Now don’t be forgetting Aunt Rose in your prayers tonight.’
‘I won’t,’ Lizzie promised but she smiled because she knew her mammy wasn’t cross with her any more and she disliked Bridie and her way of going on as much as she did herself.
Rose didn’t die, as had been feared, and neither did her tiny baby girl, whom she called Josephine after her mother, but the pair of them were very ill and were still in hospital a week later when Maggie and Kathy both gave birth to baby boys on 30 July. Kathy called her son Padraic, after her beloved brother Pat, and Maggie named her baby Tim, and by the middle of August Lizzie had forgotten there was such a thing as a holiday, for she was run off her feet.
Eventually Kathy and Maggie were both up and about again. Their two boys were placid and good sleepers. In contrast, little Josie, tinier by far than her plump, healthy-looking cousins, still cried often, wouldn’t settle and refused to suckle. She had to be put on the bottle, which made Rose feel a failure on top of everything else. She was very weak herself, and often tired, and a demanding baby as well as the other two little ones made things harder for her.
Kathy was unable to do much for Rose, for she had her own family to see to, Bridie never off the doorstep and Barry’s mother Molly to visit, but Maggie and Mary both tried to help. All the family were worried about Rose and wee Josie and took Pete and Nuala off her hands as often as they could.
The first bombs fell in Birmingham on the night of 8 August, leaving one person dead and five injured. Many thought the lone German bomber was actually looking for Fort Dunlop, but was unable to find it in the black-out and dropped his load in Erdington instead. Kathy knew that the battle was on now and the phoney war was over, and she prepared her cellar as if for a siege, while sporadic bombing raids took place in various parts of the city throughout August. She lugged mattresses down the stone steps, and told the astonished children that in future they would sleep with her in her bed. If they were woken by a raid, they were to put on their shoes and their outdoor coats, which Kathy would leave at the end of the bed. If they could drag their eiderdowns after them without tripping themselves up, so much the better. Danny was in charge of the torch, and Lizzie was responsible for Kathy’s box containing the ration books, identity cards and post office savings book. Kathy would follow with the baby in the large wicker basket that she was using for a cradle just now, and she assured the children they’d be as safe as houses.
On the night of 25 August, the children hadn’t been in bed long when the siren went off. Kathy wasn’t too worried, though she urged them to hurry. They’d had plenty of these skirmishes that had turned out to be nothing, and she crept down behind the children, carrying the sleeping Padraic, and hoping it would be over soon.
She met Bridie coming in through the cellar door – she’d given her sister-in-law a key as it saved time – and they settled the children on the mattresses, cuddled up with the eiderdowns. Kathy made tea and produced biscuits, and it began to take on the air of a picnic.
When the droning planes came so near that they could hear the whine and whistle of the bombs and the shuddering crashes as they descended on the city centre, the children’s eyes opened wider with fear. Kathy’s blood seemed to freeze in her veins, and she looked at Bridie and saw stark terror in her face as the ack-ack guns began the attack.
Matt, Danny and Sheelagh began to howl. Lizzie wanted to cry too – she’d never in all her life been as scared – but she noticed that her mammy wasn’t crying, so she decided she wouldn’t either. She held herself so rigid on the mattress, with her hands balled into fists beside her, that she shook slightly, but no tears slid down her cheeks.
The noise was incredible, the ferocious blasts and crashes hurt Lizzie’s ears, and in the middle of it came a furious knocking at the entry door at the top of the cellar steps. Kathy’s startled eyes met those of Bridie. Who would knock at the door in the middle of a raid? But whoever it was, it must be trouble, and with a feeling of dread she crossed the room.
As Kathy was about to open the cellar door, Lizzie threw herself at her mother. ‘No, Mammy!’ It was almost a scream, and Lizzie’s eyes looked wild as she pleaded, ‘Don’t, don’t go up there.’
Kathy understood how Lizzie felt; God, she felt it herself. She took her daughter’s protesting hands in her own and said gently, ‘I must see who it is, Lizzie.’ Then she gave her a little push away and added, ‘Go on now, be a good girl. I’ll be back in a minute.’ Lizzie said nothing more, but stood watching her mother go up the cellar steps.
Kathy swung open the entry door. In the dim light she could just make out the figures of two ARP wardens. One cradled little Josie in a blanket and the other had Nuala in her arms and was supporting Rose, who held tight to Pete’s hand.
‘What in God’s name…?’ The words were almost lost in the deafening crash terrifyingly near. Kathy tasted dust in her mouth, and there was an acrid smell in her nose.
‘Found her in the street, missus,’ said one of the wardens, as Kathy pulled her sister-in-law inside and took Josie from the woman’s arms. ‘Trying to get to her ma’s with the children. Your place was closer, so we brought her here.’
‘Yes, of course, you did right,’ Kathy said.
‘We’ll leave you to it, then, missus,’ the other warden said, setting little Nuala on her feet.
‘Yes, thank you. Thank you for bringing her.’
Rose