Love Me Tender

‘That’s all right. I’ll show you,’ said the nurse.

A short time later, Kathy found herself talking to Mrs Pickering, who owned the shop just up from the O’Malleys’. She shouted a bit, unable to believe that sound could travel from one instrument to another so effectively unless she bawled her head off, and though Mrs Pickering might have been rendered deaf in one ear for a time, she reassured Kathy and promised to pass the news on to her parents. Then Kathy went home with Peggy Hopkins and spent a very comfortable night on her sofa.

It was over breakfast that Kathy faced up to the fact that she hadn’t told Barry about the deaths of his brothers. There hadn’t been time the previous day, and anyway she’d hesitated to load him down with more sadness. She hoped he was feeling stronger this morning, for she’d have to talk to him.

When Kathy walked into the ward, the men greeted her as if they’d known her forever. ‘You did them a power of good yesterday, Mrs O’Malley,’ a young nurse told Kathy as she passed. ‘They all spruced themselves up this morning when they heard you were coming back. Some who hadn’t had a shave for a week were asking for razors this morning.’

Kathy laughed and said, ‘If they’d do that for someone my shape, they’d be standing on their heads for some of the young lasses in the town.’

‘They would that, and it’s a sight I wouldn’t like to miss.’

But the young nurse was right. Barry was propped up, looking far more cheerful, with his hair brushed and the stubble gone from his cheeks and chin. Kathy was delighted to see him looking so well and was pleased he seemed to be coming to terms with Pat’s death and accepting it for the tragic accident it was. She dredged up little incidents about the family, things she couldn’t remember writing in her letters, and funny things the weans had said, trying desperately to amuse him.

But Barry was no fool. He knew Kathy was holding something back and he only waited till she stopped to draw breath before saying, ‘What is it?’

Kathy was taken aback. ‘What’s what? Nothing. What do you mean?’ she stammered, confused.

Barry studied her, more sure than ever that she was hiding something. ‘How’s Ma?’ he said.

‘Great, so she is, great,’ Kathy said. ‘I go up a couple of times a week and she comes down sometimes…’ Her voice trailed away as she remembered the last time she’d seen Molly O’Malley, and at once Barry knew there was something wrong at home.

‘What is it, Kathy?’ he said. ‘I know something is bothering you, and if you don’t tell me, I’ll only worry when you’ve gone.’

He put out his good hand but Kathy pulled away and said, almost angrily, ‘Nothing I tell you. Your ma’s fine.’

‘My brothers then? Something’s damn well wrong,’ Barry burst out.

Kathy couldn’t prevent the shadow from passing over her face and Barry just asked, ‘Who?’

Kathy’s voice was barely above a whisper as she answered, ‘Phil and Donal.’

‘The two of them, dear Christ,’ Barry moaned, and after a slight pause asked, ‘Are they both…dead?’

Kathy just nodded, and Barry shut his eyes against the pain of it. Suddenly his hand shot out and grabbed Kathy’s. ‘Kath, I want you out of that place.’

‘What place?’

‘Birmingham.’

‘Don’t be daft, Barry.’

‘I’m not being daft. Pregnant women can be evacuated, with their children.’

‘I can’t just run away, Barry. What about your ma – she’s got to rely on me a lot now – and Bridie and Mammy and Daddy coming to terms with the loss of Pat? And what if Michael, Sean or Con are gone too, that will break Mammy’s heart altogether, not to mention Maggie and Rose. I can’t just go somewhere safe and pretend they’re nothing to me.’

Barry considered this and knew she had a point. ‘Well, the children then,’ he said.

Kathy made an impatient movement on the bed. ‘We’ve discussed this already,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t keen on the weans going to strangers and you agreed with me.’

‘Yes,’ Barry said, ‘I did, but…look, everyone knows Hitler is working towards invasion. However you look at it, Dunkirk was a defeat, and he’ll think we’re crushed and now is the time to attack the cities. Then, when we’re demoralised and depressed, as he thinks, he’ll invade.’

‘How d’you know all this?’

‘It stands to reason, Kath,’ Barry said.

‘But why Birmingham?’

‘Oh, use your loaf,’ Barry cried impatiently. ‘Birmingham is crucial to the war effort and is bound to be targeted.’

Kathy thought a little and knew that Barry had a point. Everyone was aware of Birmingham’s contribution to the war effort. There was the Vickers factory which made Spitfires then pushed them across the road to Castle Bromwich aerodrome to be flown south; and the BSA factory turning out military motorbikes and guns. Even Cadbury’s had drastically cut their production of chocolate, and much of the workforce was packing cordite into rockets, while Dunlop made most of the tyres for the planes and military vehicles, and the car factories were busy making tanks.

‘Hitler will want to flatten Birmingham,’ Barry said. ‘You must see that.’

‘I can see he’d want to, but we’re two hundred miles from the coast.’

‘And what d’you think that is in a plane?’ Barry demanded angrily.

‘We’ve got the cellar, we’ll be all right.’

‘Oh, fine,’ Barry said sarcastically. ‘That’s all right then. And who’s to see to our weans when you have the baby? Rose or Maggie, who’ll have their own hands full, or your ma, who’ll be run off her feet looking after you all? And what about when the weans are at school?’ Barry went on. ‘Or out playing in the streets somewhere, or down the park? Can you protect them then?’

‘I won’t send my weans to strangers,’ Kathy said stubbornly.

Barry sighed in exasperation and said, ‘Look, Kathy, the chap in the last bed goes by the name of Barraclough – Chris Barraclough. They’re monied people, or were, but their father died some years ago. There’s just Chris and a younger brother, David – he’s away at school – and the mother wants to do her bit and open her home up to people from the cities who may need to escape for a while. She had evacuees before, in nineteen thirty-nine, but they went back when no bombs fell.’

‘Very nice of her, I’m sure,’ Kathy put in sarcastically. ‘But to me, they’re still strangers.’

‘Talk to Chris, he can put it better than me.’

To humour Barry, Kathy went to find Chris Barraclough. He was due to be discharged in a day or so and was sitting in a wheelchair with a rug over his knees, reading the paper. Kathy was surprised at how young he was. He had an open, honest kind of face, one you could trust somehow. He was a handsome boy too, with regular features, a full mouth, a firm chin and deep-blue eyes with dark lashes. His hair, regulation short, was blond, but the Brylcreem made it look darker. At Kathy’s approach he put aside his paper and gave her such a beautiful smile, her heart flipped in surprise.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to ask who you are. Barry has a photograph of you; he’s shown it to everyone in the ward, I think. I feel as if I know you already, and may I say, Mrs O’Malley, the photograph does not do you justice.’

Kathy flushed, not used to gallantry and unable to deal with it. ‘Mr…Mr Barraclough,’ she stammered.

‘Oh, Chris, please,’ the young man said. ‘And may I call you Kathy?’

Kathy gave a shrug and a smile. ‘Everyone else does,’ she said.

‘Well then, so will I.’ He regarded the woman in front of him and thought her very beautiful, and Barry a lucky chap. Her pregnancy had lent a bloom to her skin, and her eyes were so large and dark brown you felt you could drown in them. It seemed criminal to him that war would be waged on such as the woman before him in all the industrial cities of Britain; judging by the atrocities in Poland, none were too young, old or infirm to experience Nazi brutality.

‘My mother has a house in a small village in Herefordshire,’ he began, when Kathy explained what she’d come to see him about. ‘It’s a rambling old place, far too big for Mother now she’s on her own, but she loves it. You would love it too, I know, even if only for a week or two. It has rolling hillsides dotted with sheep, forest land and the River Wye and its tributaries. It truly is idyllic, and once you’re there, you’ll forget there’s a war being waged anywhere.’ He smiled and went on. ‘I’m off myself soon for a week of pampering and spoiling from my dear mother before I report for active service again.’

‘And what makes you think your mother would welcome my weans?’ Kathy asked quite sharply.

‘She likes children,’ Chris said disarmingly. ‘Apparently she wanted a houseful, but my father was an officer in the Great War and was badly injured internally and externally. Over the years the old wounds gave him much trouble – in fact, I can never remember him as a fit, well man; he always seemed to be an invalid. He died when my young brother David was a year old.’

‘How old is your brother now?’