A Daughter's Choice, page 14
Just six weeks later, in mid November 1942, I had another shock. Clarry was serving on HMS Avenger, an aircraft carrier, in the western Mediterranean. Most of the men had been on deck as they passed the Rock of Gibraltar, out towards the Atlantic, where they were unwittingly heading closer to a group of enemy submarines. All it took to sink the ship was one torpedo, with the terrible loss of 516 lives. The boy who used to whistle at me on my way home from the convent, the boy who gave me my first grown-up kiss, was killed. He was only twenty-two.
What an awful thing war is, when so many young men die.
13
Bittersweet
1943
It was a dramatic start to the new year, when a loud explosion resounded across our part of Blackburn. I was on my way home from the pictures with my friend Kathleen Cronshaw, who lived above her family’s chip shop round the corner on Whalley Old Road. It was about nine o’clock and we were almost home when we heard the blast. We could see people in uniforms coming and going – the police, the fire service, an ambulance – and followed to have a closer look. They were all converging on what remained of a house across the road from Kathleen’s family chip shop. I didn’t know much about the family who lived there, just that the mother worked at the munitions factory, filling bombs and shells with gunpowder.
A policeman stopped us going any further, just as Kathleen recognized her father, blackened from the explosion that had broken their windows and caused havoc all around. The house had been reduced to a terrible mess of rubble and Mr Cronshaw was disappearing into the site of the debris.
‘What happened?’ Kathleen asked one of her neighbours. ‘Did you see it?’
‘I was at home when it went off . . . and I assumed it was an unannounced air raid,’ he explained. ‘But the policeman has just told me it was an explosion that happened from inside the house. No bombs were dropped.’
‘How can that be?’ Kathleen asked.
‘Well, it could have been some kind of gas or other explosive.’
‘Could it have been gunpowder?’ she asked.
‘Well . . . yes, it could be, if there was any around.’
‘My younger brothers go over there to play sometimes,’ explained Kathleen. ‘And Derek, the eldest, told me that the boy who lives there – his mother works with gunpowder, just like Guy Fawkes.’
I waited a bit longer with Kathleen, until her father and some of the other men emerged from the building, covered in soot and dust, stumbling on the bricks and bits of wood on the ground, some of them bringing out the injured. Mr Cronshaw was carrying a child. The child didn’t move, so he carefully laid him down and wiped some of the black stuff from the boy’s face with his handkerchief. It was only then that he realized he had been carrying his own middle son.
‘Frank, Frank,’ he said frantically, sinking to his knees and gently trying to wake him. ‘Come on, son.’
But it was no good. An ambulance man came over and took his pulse, then slowly shook his head and stood back.
Kathleen ran over to join her father, kneeling with him and gently stroking her brother’s blackened arm, desperately hoping to find he had just been stunned. From where I was standing, only a few yards away, I could see quite a lot of blood on him. Kathleen was wailing by now, and the sound brought out her mother and her youngest brother, in his pyjamas. The family spent some minutes together with Frank, inconsolable in their grief. Watching this tragic scene I felt like an intruder, so I turned away from the gathered crowd. I walked sadly home and told Mother about what had happened, but I couldn’t get that image of Kathleen’s grief out of my mind for several days.
I didn’t see her for some time after that, but when I did, she told me about Frank’s funeral.
‘It was awful, as we knew it would be, having to bury our dear boy. It was comforting to see his school friends, who came in a group . . .’ She paused. ‘Somehow they made it both easier and harder to bear, with their singing and their memories of him.’ There were tears in her eyes as she told me about Frank, and in mine too, but I think it helped her to talk to me about it.
Ray had finally opted to serve in the navy, on the submarines if he could, though there was no guarantee he would be given his first choice. He enlisted, passed his medical and in late February he received his orders. Knowing what must be in the envelope, he brought it round so that we could open it together.
‘Here it is,’ he said, unfolding the letter. We read what it said with a great deal of apprehension. Up to now, Raymond had been quite excited at the thought of donning a handsome uniform and joining his friends to fight for our freedom. I suppose it was a mixture of patriotic fervour and bravado, tinged with a sense of duty and also perhaps a hint of apprehension – even fear. None of the boys wanted to be left out or, even worse, shamed for not joining up. And none of them wanted to go down the coal mines, which was always a threat. They weren’t afraid of the mines, but they feared being regarded as cowards because they weren’t in the armed services. Mining was an essential job, as everyone needed coal, so some men were ordered to do it, but nobody wanted it to be them. This letter would seal Ray’s fate. It would be the final step towards his war service.
I know we both shared a great reluctance, to say the least, to be separated for the first time. We had been almost daily companions since my family had moved to Robinson Street, about seven years before. Friends and relations always joked that we were stuck together like glue. But now it really hit us that we would have to part.
‘Well, they’ve confirmed that I’ll serve on a submarine all right,’ said Raymond.
‘But they don’t say which one,’ I added.
‘No, not yet. That’s because they told me I’d have to go for training first.’
‘Ah, so that’s what this part is about,’ I said, pointing at the longest paragraph.
‘Yes. That’s my orders. It says I have to get a train from Blackburn on the 8th March.’
‘But that’s the day after your eighteenth birthday,’ I interrupted.
‘Yes, I didn’t realize it would be as soon as that.’
We sat in silence, just staring at the stark details.
Ray broke the tension: ‘Orders is orders!’ he grinned.
We spent as much time together as we could over the next few days, going down to the rec to sit on the end of the slide and reminisce about those days when we all gathered here and the times when I used to swing around above him on the ropes.
We went to the cinema one night and saw Mrs Miniver – what a wonderful, sad film that was, and of course it starred my favourites: Greer Garson and, especially, Walter Pidgeon – the man I would have chosen to be my father. Tears were streaming down my cheeks as we filed out that night. In fact, most of the other women and girls were weeping too. It was a great film, but maybe not the right one to see just before Raymond went to war.
We carried on dancing together most evenings. ‘Next time we come to Tony’s,’ Ray said, on the eve of his eighteenth birthday, ‘I will be in my naval uniform, and then, if I’m lucky, you might even think I look handsome.’
‘You know I can’t resist a good-looking boy in a uniform,’ I agreed, squeezing his hand. ‘Especially a blue uniform.’ We both laughed at the thought.
On 7 March, Raymond celebrated his eighteenth birthday with a party at his house for his close family and me. Everybody was in a good mood, wanting to wish him well, not only because it was his birthday, but because by now everyone knew it was also his last day of ‘freedom’.
It was a bittersweet evening for us both. I sat next to Ray at the dinner table and later all his family smiled and spoke to me, as I stood proudly beside him.
After everyone else had gone, he walked me home, arm in arm, for the last time before he left. We talked non-stop all the way and continued on the doorstep.
‘Come in and say goodbye to my mother,’ I suggested.
‘Good idea.’
‘Ah, Raymond,’ said Mother with a smile as she opened the door.
‘Hello, Mrs Holden. I just came in to say goodbye. I’m leaving early tomorrow morning.’ They shook hands.
‘I’m very glad you came in. I wanted to have the chance to wish you all the best. I know Margaret will miss you.’
‘And I will miss her too.’ He nodded. ‘Very much. But I will write letters – a lot of letters.’
‘That will be lovely,’ said Mother. ‘Maybe Margaret will be able to read some of them to us, so that we can hear your news.’
‘Yes, I’ll tell you how my training goes and where I’ll be going next.’
‘Thank you, Raymond. Now you stay safe and come back to see us as soon as you possibly can.’
‘I’ll try my best,’ he agreed.
We went back out to the front doorstep. Neither of us wanted the evening to end, but we knew it had to, so I gave him a big hug and a long, loving kiss and waved him off as he slowly walked up the road, turning to wave one last time at the corner before he disappeared.
He was my best friend, my confidant, my childhood playmate and . . . well, we had never talked of engagement or marriage, but we had a very special bond and there was an unspoken understanding between us. I’m sure we both assumed we would always be together.
Only the war could part us . . . but hopefully not for long.
Raymond and I wrote letters to each other almost every day. But there were others too. Every time a different boy walked me home from the dance halls, he would invariably ask me to write to him while he was away. I hadn’t the heart to say no, so my address book soon filled up with the names and addresses of dance partners, some of whom I could barely remember. And that wasn’t the only thing that filled up.
One morning, there was a knock on the door and it was our postman with yet another pile of letters from British forces overseas.
‘I’m glad I caught you, Margaret,’ he began, with a flustered look on his face. ‘My mail bag is full every day with all these letters for you, all with different writing on. In fact, I have to use a bigger sack now and almost half of it is letters to you!’
Well, I knew that was an exaggeration, but I could see his point. Both Mother and I were trying to keep a straight face.
‘You’ll give me a hernia if this carries on!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
I did try to keep up with replying to these boys. I knew from Bobby how important letters from home were to all the boys in the forces, most of them so far away. So I did my best to reply as quickly as I could, but sometimes I did get behind with the answers. Some of the boys were so impatient that they wrote to Mother, politely enquiring about my health, or more insistently requesting her to prompt me to write back more quickly. One of them even wrote to her to ask why I hadn’t replied: ‘Has Margaret broken her arm?’ That made us laugh, but it worked. I wrote back to him straight away.
Usually the correspondence would begin by describing ordinary things, like the weather. But gradually the letters would become more daring. Quite often the boys would declare that they loved me.
I found this quite strange, since I had rarely spent more than a few hours with some of them, or a few evenings on the dance floor. I was just having fun in the moment, enjoying their company while it lasted – all very innocent. It meant much more to them, I think, than it did to me. So professions of love didn’t seem appropriate.
I never did understand this business of the word ‘love’. After all, you love your mother, you love the colour green, you love the cat and you love the weather . . . sometimes! It’s a much misused word.
Occasionally a boy would come back from the war, or I’d see him the night after we’d danced, and he’d say: ‘Do you still love me?’ What could I say to that? I loved everybody and everything in a general way. But Ray was the only one I truly loved.
He wrote me letters about all the goings-on during his training, parts of which, especially the funny stories, I used to read out to Mother and the boys during lunchtimes or after work. I always went home for lunch in those days and after we’d eaten, Mother and I often played word or number games with Jeffrey and Alan. Lexicon was our favourite and it was great at teaching both the boys to spell, each at their own level. It was a card game and each card had one letter on it, so it was all about making words, a forerunner of Scrabble. Jeffrey was already quite good at spelling and he had a wide vocabulary, but he liked to use those skills to beat Mother and me. At the same time we all helped little Alan to see that letters made words and what some of the simple words looked like. Both the boys were very bright and keen to learn.
When Ray was first posted to his submarine, he wrote and told me they would be setting off for the Far East, where he would be based. We had hoped that he would have a short leave before he went, but apparently there wasn’t time.
It all happened far too quickly and now he would only be able to write when he was on land, or in safe waters where post could be transferred between naval craft, which was quite sporadic. I did miss his letters on the days I had none, but once they started again, I would have several all at once – which was a joy. To start with, his letters were mostly light-hearted, telling me about the places he’d been, or giving nameless descriptions of them at least, trying to steer on the right side of the censor. He also described the inside of his submarine, the quirks of his fellow submariners, and the incidents and tales of his everyday life, all of which Mother and the boys loved to hear.
Increasingly he would write just to me, about his hopes for the future, the plans we could make for when he came home, or when the war was ended. Neither of us mentioned marriage for some time, but it was obvious to both of us. In one letter, Ray even described a length of delicate white lace he had bought for me, and in another a beautiful ring he had purchased for me to wear on our special day. We exchanged ideas about the kind of house we would like to live in and where it might be.
All of this sustained us over the months. Of course, there was sadness too, on both sides. It was a cruel war, especially in Asia. I worried about Raymond a lot, but tried not to dwell on the risks and dangers he faced. I preferred to fix my focus on keeping up his morale . . . and to look forward to the day when he would finally come back home.
If only he could have some leave, but apparently that was not possible from where he was. All the other boys were coming back every now and then for forty-eight hours, or sometimes more, but never Ray. It was so unfair. I longed to see him.
One of the sad things I wrote about to Raymond concerned Bobby’s old friend, Arthur Isherwood, who was killed in action. Bobby had written to tell us about it. Arthur had been a big part of our lives before the war accelerated. I often remembered with fondness the lovely holiday I had with Arthur, Bobby, Mother, her friend Alice and Jeffrey in Blackpool. Those happy days seemed so long ago now.
We knew that Arthur had been trained to take photographs on aerial reconnaissance missions. I hadn’t really thought too much about it, assuming he would be flying behind the lines. But the most important part of his job was to fly over enemy territory, as low as his pilot dared and evading the German fighter planes, to photograph potential industrial targets, railways and roads. Bobby wrote that, on 9 June 1943, Arthur’s plane was shot down in flames over Germany and he was killed – another dear friend gone to his Maker. A very sad loss.
That July, during Blackburn Wakes Week, I was with Peggy and some other girls at a dance in King George’s Hall, when we decided to go across the road to the Jubilee Inn. We went to the bar and ordered ‘Spitfires’. Well, no, I probably asked for my usual orange and lemon first, but when I saw that the Spitfire had a cherry on a stick, I decided I would have that instead . . . and that again. Suddenly I was seeing two cherries, and the ashtray looked like a box of matchsticks.
Peggy was playing the piano and we were listening.
‘That sounds like camels coming across the desert,’ I said. I do remember that.
The next thing I remember was being back in the toilet block at the dance hall, feeling as if I was dying.
Someone shouted at me, ‘If your brother could see you now!’ It was Nellie Forrester, Bobby’s old crush.
Then I was staggering and stumbling along with Peggy holding me up and somehow getting me home, where Mother put me to bed. I was there for at least a week. The doctor called one day and checked me over.
‘I think you’ve got some sort of flu, Margaret,’ he said. Did I imagine that he winked ever so slightly at my mother?
‘That’s strange,’ I said. ‘I had the new flu injection at Philips last week.’
‘What’s that?’ Mother asked in surprise.
‘It’s a trial,’ I replied. ‘I think it’s the first time they’ve done it. They said it would stop me getting the flu, so how do I have it now?’
‘Perhaps it’s a different kind of flu,’ suggested the doctor.
Luckily, I’d fully recovered in time for a family trip to Blackpool in August. We were in the Tower Ballroom at the ‘tea dance’, when a Polish officer came over to our table and clicked his heels together.
He turned to my mother. ‘May I ask your daughter to dance?’
She was impressed by his good manners. ‘Yes, you may,’ she agreed with a smile.
He turned to me. ‘May you dance with me?’
We went out together onto the dance floor. He was a good dancer and I was glad to have him as a partner. He spoke reasonably good English, so we were talking as we danced. He told me his name was Ivan and when I said my name was Margaret, he said ‘Marishka’, which sounded lovely.
Suddenly there was a commotion, as Alan pulled himself away from Mother and trotted onto the dance floor, straight towards me. He pulled at the Polish airman’s trousers, then started smacking his legs. Well, by this time, everyone in the place was laughing, including the band who had seen it all and could hardly play another note, so the music petered out and everyone stopped dancing to look.
