Keep the Home Fires Burning

Sarah laughed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t take that to heart, if I were you. But then,’ she went on with a wry smile, ‘she might be a help to you if you can’t remember what you’ve done wrong over the years. If you call and see her she could probably supply you with a list.’

‘And if you told the priest all that Grandma told you to say you would spend ages on your knees doing the penance he gave you,’ Missie said, smiling at the vision that conjured up.

‘I’m not going anywhere near Grandma Murray,’ Magda said with a slight shudder. ‘I will just tell the priest what I remember and that will be that.’

‘Are you nervous?’ Sarah asked.

‘A bit,’ Magda admitted.

‘It’s just strange, that’s all,’ Sarah said. ‘You get used to it and, remember, he can’t say anything you tell him to anyone else.’

‘I know that, but he’ll know, won’t he?’

‘Well, of course. But won’t it be worth all this nervousness to wear that beautiful white dress and veil?’

‘Ooh, yes,’ Magda said, and Missie nodded emphatically. Just to think about her Communion dress sent tingles of excitement all though Magda, which began in her toes and spread all over her body. Marion had taken the girls to the Bull Ring to buy them both snow-white dresses decorated with beautiful sparkling seed pearls and lace and pretty pale blue rosebuds. The veils were fastened to their hair with white satin bands also decorated with the pale blue rosebuds, and they had new white socks and sandals. When they got home they tried their outfits on for their father to see and he’d said they looked like a couple of princesses. When he kissed them both Magda was very surprised to see tears in his eyes.

‘I had a dress like that once,’ Sarah said, remembering her First Communion day.

‘I know,’ Magda said. ‘Mom told me. She said she gave it to Aunt Polly after.’

‘Yes,’ Sarah said. ‘Poor Mary Ellen had to have a dress loaned from the school, but my dress came in for Siobhan and Orla.’

‘I would have hated to have a First Communion dress loaned that way,’ Missie said. ‘Wouldn’t you, Magda?’

Magda nodded and Sarah said, ‘You thank your lucky stars that you didn’t have to, but there are far worst things about being poor than a secondhand Communion dress.’

‘I’d hate to be poor as well.’

‘Be glad that you’re not then,’ Sarah said. ‘There are a great many poor these days. We are luckier than a lot of families, and don’t you ever forget that.’

The twins knew all about the poor. Uncle Pat and Auntie Polly were poor, and their children wore boots and clothes donated by the Evening Mail Christmas Tree Fund. They knew that despite the help their mother gave Polly, without the Christmas Tree Fund their cousins would probably have had to go barefoot to school a lot of the time, and been without warm, adequate clothing through the winter. Sarah was right, they were luckier than many families. But the twins didn’t feel lucky when they filed into church that Friday afternoon for their confession.

When it was Magda’s turn she slid from her pew, aware her legs were all of a dither, and went into the little box. It was quite dim with the door shut, and when she kneeled down beside the grille she could just about see the outline of Father McIntyre on the other side and she whispered the words they had been practising at school: ‘Bless me, Father for I have sinned. This is my first confession.’

She stopped then, not sure what to say because whatever her grandmother said, Magda thought she hadn’t sinned much. She was never cheeky or disobedient to her parents, grandparents or teachers or any other grown-up, because she would have had the legs smacked off her if she had been, and the same thing would happen if she was found to be telling lies. She’d never dream of taking something that didn’t belong to her and had never even put half her collection money in her shoe as she had seen Tony do sometimes.

Then she remembered how lax she was about prayers and how she was often in bed before she thought of them, but she always told her mother that she had said them when she came to tuck the twins in, so that was adding lying to it as well and so she told the priest that. She didn’t mention the fact that she sometimes hated Tony, and her grandmother too, and she supposed that was a sin, though not, she thought, the sort of thing she could admit to a priest. She had to say three Hail Marys and a Glory Be as a penance. Missie and most of their classmates had been given the same.

‘We must make sure that we don’t do something really dreadful tomorrow,’ Missie warned as she and Magda walked home together afterwards. ‘The teacher said that our souls must be as white as snow to receive Holy Communion.’

‘We never get the chance to do something really dreadful,’ Magda said, but she made a mental note that she would make sure she didn’t forget her prayers that night, or Saturday either, to make sure she’d have no stain on her soul when she went to the rails.

That Sunday morning all the girls were to the left of the aisle and Magda sneaked a look at the boys on the other side. Many had smart new white shirts, and the richer amongst them also had black shiny shoes and new grey trousers, and socks that probably stayed up better than the ones many wore to school, which resided in concertina rolls around their ankles unless they were held up by garters. But all in all the boys’ clothes were very commonplace when compared to the girls’ finery. In fact, the only thing that marked this day as a special one for the boys was the satin sash they each had around their shoulders, which lay across the body and fastened at the hip.

The strains of the organ brought people to their feet. Marion watched all the children looking so angelic on this very special day. They were quieter than she had ever known them. The sense of occasion had got into even the most mischievous, and there was no fidgeting or whispering, and no one dropped their pennies for the collection. As they left their seats to go up to the rails a little later, she felt tears stinging her eyes as she wondered what was in store for these young children if their country went to war.

THREE (#ulink_b1b44451-5fa3-5211-bacc-adb72cfebf9b)

Everywhere that sultry summer there was evidence of things to come. Big trenches were dug in Aston Park, swathes of brown where once there had been green grass, and the following week all the railings were hacked down. By early August, strange windowless buildings appeared everywhere and the older children were drafted in to fill sacks with sand.

By mid-August they heard about the blackout that would come into force on 1 September. Every householder was told to black out the windows, streetlights would be turned off, no cars would be allowed lights, and even torches would be forbidden.

‘So you are right as usual, Bill,’ Marion said. ‘They must expect attacks from the air or they wouldn’t be going to so much trouble. And there’s a fine of two hundred pounds if there is a chink of light showing. I’d better go down the Bull Ring Saturday and see what I can get.’ She sighed as she went on, ‘It will cost something, too, to recurtain the whole house. Thank God Polly’s two lads are working now. She will probably have the money to buy the material. Mammy has an old treadle she won’t mind us using, especially if we offer to make hers up as well.’

But before Marion got to go down to the Bull Ring, an education officer called round with the headmaster of the school to talk about evacuation of the children. Though Marion was worried about them, and how they would cope in the event of war, she thought it a monstrous plan to send her children to some strangers in what the Government deemed ‘a place of safety’. She rejected the idea quite definitely, and Polly, she found, had done the same.

‘Whatever we face, we face together. That’s how I see it,’ Polly said to Marion. ‘I mean, they could end up going to anyone.’

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Marion said. ‘The twins are just seven and Tony was only nine in April. They’re far too young to be sent away from home, and Sarah said she wanted to go nowhere either. It would feel like running away, she said, and anyway, she’s looking forward to leaving school and earning some money.’

‘Can’t blame them, though, can you?’ Polly said. ‘Can’t do owt in this world without money, and that I know only too well.’

One Friday evening towards the end of August Marion turned on the wireless and caught the tail end of an announcement: ‘As a precaution gas masks are being issued to every person in Britain. These will be available from 1 September. Please study your local papers to find out where your nearest collection point will be.’

‘Gas masks, Bill, for God’s sake,’ Marion cried, and her face was as white as lint.

‘It’s just in case,’ Bill said. ‘You heard what he said.’

‘Yes, but even so …’

‘In the last war the Germans used gas to disable the troops,’ Bill reminded her. ‘You know that yourself. You’ve seen some poor sods down the Bull Ring with their lungs near ate away with mustard gas. Twenty years on they might have worked out how to drop it on the civilian population. I’m not saying they will,’ he added, looking at Marion’s terror-stricken face, ‘but surely it’s better to be safe than sorry?’

‘I suppose it is,’ Marion said. ‘It’s just that I don’t want to think of it.’

Bill put his arms around her. ‘None of us do, not really, and there is something else that I must tell you now that war seems inevitable.’

‘What?’

‘Well, it has been in my head for some time, but I haven’t wanted to upset you by speaking of it sooner,’ Bill said. ‘But now you really need to know that when war is declared, I intend to enlist.’

‘No, Bill!’ Marion cried. ‘No, Bill, you can’t.’

Bill tightened his arms around her. ‘Don’t take on, old girl,’ he said. ‘You must have known this was on the cards.’

But Marion hadn’t known. Such thoughts had never crossed her mind. Bill had a family, responsibilities, and she had thought that would make him safe, or as safe as anyone can be in a war. She pulled herself out of his embrace and said, ‘Just how did you expect me to react, Bill? Did you think that I would be jumping up and down with delight?’

‘You know how I feel about Hitler and his bloody bunch of hoodlum Germans,’ Bill protested. ‘I’m doing this because I want to try and protect you.’

‘Sorry, Bill, that doesn’t make me feel any better.’

‘Look,’ said Bill, ‘Hitler and his armies are marching all over Europe. He already has Austria and Czechoslovakia, and now he is casting his eye over Poland. Where will he look next? If he conquers the Low Countries he will make his way to France, and if France falls we are just a step across the Channel. Believe me, Marion, Britain will need every man they can get to take on the German Army and try and stop them in their tracks.’

‘I can see they might need young men,’ Marion conceded. ‘But not men as old as you, and family men at that.’

‘I’m thirty-nine and that’s not old,’ Bill said. ‘Not according to the army, anyway.’

‘But what of your job?’ Marion cried. ‘How will they manage at the foundry if all the men go off soldiering?’