Love Me Tender

Lizzie missed her father greatly, and the man who came home on a week’s leave in October didn’t seem like her daddy at all. He was dressed all in khaki that was rough against her legs when he pulled her against him. ‘How’s my little girl then?’ he said, and she wanted to put her arms around his neck and sob into his shoulder because she was scared that everything had changed in her young life, and yet she said nothing, knowing without being told that she shouldn’t spoil her daddy’s leave with a list of complaints.

The second day of the leave was Con and Maggie’s wedding day, which both were anxious to have finalised before Con went overseas. Lizzie was quite disappointed in the sober cream suit Maggie wore, though she had to admit it looked good on her as she walked down the aisle of St Catherine’s Church on Eamonn’s arm. She’d expected a long, flowing white dress, but her mother said there wasn’t time to go to so much trouble and anyway it wasn’t right in wartime.

It seemed the war affected everything. The local pub, The Bell, put on a spread for the few friends and family who called to wish the couple well, and the landlord Johnny McEvoy said it was the least he could do.

No one could deny Maggie’s happiness, Kathy thought; it shone out of her and affected everyone, even Mary and Eamonn, who’d have liked their girl to have had a better send-off. Con went round with a proud smile on his face and his eyes followed Maggie’s every move.

There was no time or money for a honeymoon, but the newly-weds had one night together in a hotel. After that, it was back to Mary and Eamonn’s, for all had agreed there was no point in Maggie looking for her own place until the war should be over and Con discharged. However, for the duration of the rest of his leave, Michael and Carmel lodged with Kathy so that Con and Maggie could have the attic bedroom to themselves.

Lizzie loved having Carmel share her room and wished she could do it all the time; it was like having an older sister. Carmel was thirteen now and anxious to be leaving school in the spring. ‘What will you do?’ Lizzie asked, and Carmel shrugged.

‘I’m not sure, but anything has got to be better than school, hasn’t it?’

Lizzie liked school, but answered, ‘Oh, yes.’

‘Since the war’s been declared there’s more choice,’ Carmel said.

‘Is there?’ That was the first Lizzie had heard of the war being good news for anyone.

‘You bet,’ Carmel said emphatically. ‘My friend’s sister is making munitions, that’s where the money is. She’s making a packet.’

‘Gosh.’

‘Shame you’re so young, really,’ Carmel said a little disparagingly. ‘The war will be over before you grow up.’

Lizzie remembered all the men going off to fight and thought she hoped it would, but said nothing. ‘March next year I’m off,’ Carmel went on. ‘I’ll be fourteen then.’ She sat up in the bed she was sharing with her niece and squeezed her knees tight in excitement as she said, ‘Just over four months. Ooh, I can hardly wait.’

They heard the footsteps on the stairs and quickly lay down in the bed again, thinking it was Kathy or Barry come to scold, but it was only Michael, who was also sharing the bedroom. ‘You two still awake?’ he said quietly, to avoid waking the sleeping Danny.

The two girls kept their eyes closed and pretended to be asleep, and Michael chuckled. ‘Don’t be codding on,’ he said. ‘We could hear you talking and giggling downstairs. Kathy was for coming up, she thought you’d wake Danny.’

Lizzie opened her eyes and looked at her uncle. ‘Danny never wakes,’ she said. ‘He’d sleep through an earthquake; he’s boring.’

‘Maybe he thinks bed’s the place for sleeping,’ Michael said, his voice muffled by the curtain Barry had set up for him to change behind.

‘That’s what I mean, he’s boring,’ Lizzie said.

Carmel put in, ‘You can’t expect our Michael to understand that, he’s just a man,’ and Michael’s throaty chuckle was the last thing Lizzie remembered about Maggie’s wedding day.

The five-day leave was almost over before Barry talked to Kathy about the war, not wanting to spoil their time together before. They were by themselves for once. Carmel had returned home; Sean and Pat were with their own wives and children; Con, Maggie and Michael were about their own concerns, and Barry was grateful for it. ‘I think it’s the big push for us when we go back,’ he said.

‘You mean overseas? France?’

‘I can’t be sure, but it’s odd to have a week’s leave like this, and rumours are flying about everywhere,’ Barry said.

‘It’s so soon,’ Kathy said.

‘Hitler’s hardly likely to wait around while we go through a six-month training period.’

‘I know that.’

‘And they’ve been putting us through it, I can tell you,’ Barry said.

‘You’re looking forward to it,’ Kathy said accusingly, looking at Barry’s excited face.

‘Partly,’ Barry admitted. ‘After all, it’s what I joined up for, and it’s nice we’ll be going together, wherever we end up.’

‘Pat seems a bit quiet,’ Kathy said. ‘Is he all right?’

‘That’s Bridie, I think,’ Barry said. ‘Putting him down all the time. He’s different at the barracks, life and soul. Very popular bloke.’

Something in Barry’s tone alarmed Kathy, and she asked, ‘He isn’t…you know…like, cheating on her or anything?’

Barry didn’t answer. Instead he dropped his eyes from Kathy’s and said, ‘She hasn’t let him near her for years, you know, not since she had Matt. Many a man would have insisted, a bloke can be too easy-going. Well now, if he is seeking comfort elsewhere, Bridie only has herself to blame. He’s flesh and blood same as the rest of us. Mind,’ he went on, ‘I don’t know that he is, not for certain, and I don’t ask, but there’s plenty of girls who would be only too happy to…well, you know. Like I said, he’s popular. You’d have to go a long way to find another like Pat.’

Didn’t Kathy know it; she couldn’t blame him, and God alone knew he needed a medal for putting up with Bridie. Barry was right, a man could be too easy-going; another man would have given Bridie many a clout for half the things Kathy had heard her say to Pat. She didn’t doubt what Barry had told her about Pat and Bridie’s sex life, for hadn’t Bridie said the same to her? But God, wasn’t she a stupid fool denying her husband, and it was a sin too. Many would have had the priest to see her by now, but Pat likely wouldn’t want to embarrass her like that. Suddenly she gave a huge sigh.

‘Come on,’ Barry said, pulling her to her feet. ‘Stop worrying about Pat. Worry about me for a change. I’ll be away in the morning, so I want something to remember in the weeks ahead.’

‘Oh, maybe I’ll say I’m not in the mood, like Bridie,’ Kathy said with a smile.

‘Try it, my girl, and I’ll have you across my shoulder and carry you to bed, where I’ll insist you carry out your wifely duty,’ Barry told her with mock severity. ‘I’m no Pat Sullivan.’

Lizzie heard them later, going laughing up the stairs. She was glad they were friends, but somehow it made her feel more lonely than ever. She knew her father would be gone in the morning and she hadn’t told him how she felt, and she’d not get the chance again.

With Maura Mahon and a couple of Lizzie’s other friends either evacuated with the school or sent away privately to relations and friends, Sheelagh was the only one near Lizzie’s age in the road, and so they were always being grouped together. Sheelagh never seemed to mind, and Lizzie thought she derived malicious pleasure from having someone to taunt and make fun of all the way to school in the morning and back in the evening. She’d go round in the playground with gangs whose aim in life was to harass Lizzie O’Malley. They thought her fair game, being a year younger, and singled her out mercilessly.

Lizzie, depressed and miserable, considered complaining to her mother, but she’d probably think she was making something out of nothing and say Sheelagh was just having a game, and it wasn’t as if they ever did anything.

Anyway, she knew that she couldn’t worry her mother, however bad it got; she already had enough on her plate, without Lizzie adding to it. Barry had asked Kathy to keep an eye on his own mother, Molly O’Malley. She was a widow with no daughters, and none of Barry’s three brothers were married, but all of them were overseas, so Kathy felt in some way responsible for her. She didn’t live far from the O’Malley home, just at the top end of Grant Street, and Kathy had no objections to looking out for her.

‘She’s bound to feel it,’ Barry had said. ‘Especially with us all gone,’ and she did, for Kathy said she was a bag of nerves worrying about them all and she made a point of going up to Grant Street a couple of times a week. Kathy’s father was fire-watching too, and that was another cause for concern, for Lizzie knew her grandad’s chest was terrible.

Then there was the black-out, which had to be fixed to every window before the gas could be lit and the ARP wardens parading outside to see it was done properly. Lizzie hated the black drapes at the living-room windows and the black shutters on the bedrooms. They made her feel closed in and uneasy, but her mammy said it had to be done.

And in addition to all this, October had been particularly cold and dismal, and after a warm September it was hard to take. Then November proved to be the same, with biting winds driving the sharp spears of rain bouncing on to the grey pavements. And in the cold and the rain the Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers were part of the British Expeditionary Force that headed for France.

Then December was upon them, and there was also talk of rationing being introduced just after Christmas. Kathy was worried about how they’d cope. ‘Same as everyone else, I suppose,’ Bridie said gloomily one day, and added, ‘I suppose our soldiers will be fed all right and it won’t matter if the rest of us starve.’

‘I don’t think it will come to that,’ Kathy said. ‘And at least with rationing it will be fair; rich or poor will all have the same.’

‘Huh, we’ll see.’

Kathy couldn’t make Bridie out; she never seemed happy about anything or anyone. She decided to change the subject. ‘Have you heard from Pat at all?’ she said.

‘Aye, though he never has much to say.’

‘Their letters are censored, I suppose,’ Kathy said. ‘Though Barry is usually able to drag up something to amuse the weans.’