A wing and a prayer, p.7
A Wing and a Prayer, page 7
Alice was shy, much more reserved than her sister. She was pretty, too, with long fawn hair, delicate features and a slim figure. She was not confident, though, with people she did not know, so Lizzie was the one who got the attention.
Megan did not see a great deal of the new arrivals, although you could not fail to be aware of their presence. Every evening you could hear their laughter and their strident voices raised in a chorus of ‘Bless ’em all’, or ‘Roll out the Barrel’, accompanied on the rather out-of-tune piano by one of the lads who could play.
Ada had unlocked the piano again and didn’t mind how they used it. ‘Poor lads,’ she said. ‘Let ’em enjoy themselves. They’ll be in the thick of it before long.’
They stayed there for only a few months, then they were sent elsewhere for further specialized training, and other new recruits took their place.
In February Norman decided he would join up.
‘If you join the RAF they might let you stay here, Daddy,’ said Megan.
‘No, love; that’s not a good idea,’ he told her. ‘Anyway, I’m going to join the army. I shall be a soldier, not an airman.’
He told Lizzie he felt guilty with all those lads in the house, ‘all doing their bit for King and Country. I don’t want somebody handing me a white feather.’
‘Oh, they’ll not be doing that this time,’ said Ada. ‘Wait till you’re called up, Norman.’
But he would not listen. He enlisted and was sent to a camp in the south of England.
‘I doubt if he’ll see active service,’ said Ada. ‘Not for a whit at any rate.’
She was proved right because in May the troops who were fighting on the Continent suffered a severe setback. After losing ground with the Germans they were forced to flee to the coast of France. The name Dunkirk was soon on everyone’s lips.
When Megan looked back on those wartime years her mind was a jumble of memories. Some were quite clear; others she had almost forgotten. After all, it was fifty years ago.
She remembered the retreat from Dunkirk. She had watched pictures of it on the Gaumont British News at the Odeon cinema. Soldiers had been stranded on the beaches in northern France, and lots of little ships and boats had sailed across the Channel to bring them home to England.
Everyone was very proud of the British soldiers, and they were treated like heroes, although Megan realized in later years that it had been a defeat, not a victory, and that the future had looked very grim at that time.
The new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was often on the news at the cinema. He had a face like a bulldog and smoked a big cigar. He said our country would never be defeated, and everybody tried to believe him. You would often see Adolf Hitler as well, the man who was causing all the trouble in Germany. He was a small man with sleek black hair and a little moustache. The boys at school mimicked him, lifting up their right arms and saying, ‘Heil Hitler’.
Megan also remembered that her Aunt Alice had gone out to work for the first time in her life. She had always worked for Grandma Ada in the boarding house, but as the war continued, all the women who were not married had to go and do some sort of work to help the war effort. They could join the army or navy or RAF – although they would not do any fighting – or go to work on a farm as a Land Girl. Or they could work at a munitions factory helping to build aeroplanes and tanks.
Alice chose to work at a branch of the Vickers-Armstrongs aircraft factory. The main factory was at Squires Gate, near Blackpool, on the road to St Annes. There was a nearer one, however, over near the bus station in Talbot Road, a few minutes’ walk from her home, so Alice decided she would go and work there.
She set off each morning looking very different, in trousers and green overalls and a turban covering her hair. She had not wanted to go at first. She was timid and had never learned to stick up for herself.
Thinking about it, so many years later, Megan realized that going out to work, especially doing war work, had been the making of Alice. She had become a very different person, although it had not happened all at once.
Megan had not recognized the photograph of the young RAF corporal, but she knew that her aunt had made new friends at work, and had gone out in the evenings, to the cinema and the dance halls, things she had not done before. It was very likely that she had become friendly with some of the RAF lads who had stayed there; obviously there had been one who had become very special to her.
Megan had not known anything about this. As a child of eight or nine she had been told nothing at all. She had known only that Aunt Alice had gone away for a rest because she was poorly, and had come back several months later, very pale and subdued.
Other memories surfaced from the depths of Megan’s mind as she thought about those wartime years. Her father had joined the army and was granted leave every few months. He remarked each time he saw her how much she had grown. As he was stationed in the south of England it was quite easy for him to get home, although he said it was a long and weary journey on crowded trains.
He did not go overseas until 1944, at the time of the D-Day landings. He was in the second wave of troops who crossed to France and, fortunately, he returned safe and sound. Many of the fathers of Megan’s school friends were in the forces, and they often had special efforts at school to help the soldiers, sailors and airmen: raffles and jumble sales, and competitions for the best designed poster for ‘Dig for Victory’ or the ‘Squander Bug’. They were encouraged to defeat the Squander Bug by saving up their pennies to buy sixpenny savings stamps, the money going to help the war effort.
Megan was sure that her mum missed her dad; she said that she did, and Megan missed him very much. Mummy chatted a lot more to the airmen now that Daddy was not there. She had thought very little about it at the time, but, looking back on it, certain memories became clearer and more meaningful.
It would have been a couple of years after her dad had joined the army that her mum had become friendly with the sergeant who was in charge of the men at the billet. He was Sergeant Whittaker, and her mum called him Alan. He sometimes came to their room upstairs and had a cup of tea with her mum, and when Megan had gone to bed she could hear them talking and laughing in the room next door.
It was only in later years that Megan recalled how lively her mum had seemed when Sergeant Whittaker was around – she looked prettier, with a touch of lipstick and her hair nicely combed.
He had gone, though, after a few months, as they all did. Megan had never heard of him again, and she had almost forgotten about him until now.
She smiled to herself. She could not possibly ask her mother about her friendship with the sergeant, but she would most certainly ask her about the young corporal with whom her Aunt Alice had been so friendly. Surely it was time that all the secrecy came to an end.
SEVEN
‘Oh, so that’s all come to light, has it?’ said Lizzie when Megan told her about the box of mementoes that Helen had found, especially the photo of the young airman. ‘Well, I can tell you, it’s best forgotten, Megan, like it has been for years. We never talked about it. Your gran wouldn’t let anyone mention it so there’s no point in dragging it all up again now.’
‘But Aunt Alice didn’t forget, did she?’ said Megan. ‘She obviously loved him very much, as he loved her.’
‘Well, that’s as may be, but what does it matter now? Just forget about it, Megan, and tell Helen to forget about it an’ all.’
Megan looked keenly at her mother. ‘Alice had a baby, didn’t she?’
‘Yes, she did, and it nearly killed your gran, the disgrace of it all! Not that anybody ever knew outside of the family. Folks may have guessed there was summat up, but we never breathed a word, we were so ashamed of her.’
‘Why, Mother? It was wartime. That must have happened to lots of young women.’
‘That doesn’t make it right, does it? Oh, I know folks reckon nothing much to it nowadays. Young lasses jump into bed with somebody they’ve only just met, but it was different then. Well-brought-up girls were expected to behave themselves.’
‘Did she have a boy or a girl?’ Megan was determined not to let the matter drop. ‘And what happened to it? I mean … to him or her?’
‘I don’t know what she had. Happen your gran knew, but she never said. I told you, we never talked about it. Alice went to stay with your gran’s sister, Aunt Maggie, near Bradford till it was all over, and the child was adopted.’
‘Poor Alice! And what happened to the young airman? Do you remember him? He was called Tony Sinclair.’
‘Oh aye, I remember him all right, and we knew Alice was friendly with him. She’d had one or two boyfriends; she came out of her shell when she went to work at the factory and started to meet other young lasses. Then he went to a camp down south. I think he was training to be a wireless operator, so he probably went on a bombing raid and never came back. We never heard of him again. That’s all I know and all I’m telling you.’
‘I do think you might have told me before, Mother. It must have been dreadful for Aunt Alice.’
‘Aye, maybe it was.’ Lizzie’s eyes softened momentarily. ‘But she got over it, didn’t she? She was happy enough living in Yorkshire.’
‘Why did she go back there? Do you think she tried to find out about the baby? Or about Tony and what happened to him?’
‘Alice wanted a fresh start, and I suppose you couldn’t blame her. Things weren’t right between her and your gran. When we left the boarding house she went to lodge with a friend she’d met at the factory. She worked in a shop for a while, then she upped sticks and went to Yorkshire. She lived in one or two places there, then she settled in Thornbeck.’
‘And she made it up with Gran? I suppose Gran forgave her eventually, did she, for straying from the straight and narrow?’
Lizzie was aware of the hint of sarcasm in her daughter’s words. ‘It wasn’t summat to be taken lightly, Megan,’ she retorted. ‘But we all got along better as the years went by. It was all a long time ago … so just forget about it and tell Helen to do the same. There’s no point in dragging up the past; goodness knows what you might find.’
All the same, Lizzie doubted that Megan would heed her words and, more particularly, neither would Helen. She was a law unto herself, that young woman.
When Megan had gone home and Lizzie was alone that evening the memories flooded back – right back to the time when they had moved to Blackpool to live at the boarding house …
Lizzie had always hated her name. Her proper name, Elizabeth, was a good, dignified name – the name of queens – but no one ever called her by it.
‘Come on, our Lizzie,’ her mother would shout. ‘Get a move on washing them pots. We haven’t got all day …’ And that was before she left school and had a full-time job working for her mother.
Nowadays Lizzie was quite a fashionable name. Young women didn’t mind being called Lizzie, or Liz. Liz Taylor, of course, had helped to boost the popularity of the name. At the time Lizzie was born, in the early years of the century, and before that, in the Victorian era, it had been customary to shorten names, or to make them more ordinary. Sarah became Sally, Ellen or Eleanor became Nellie, and Margaret became Maggie.
As Lizzie Fletcher she had worked like a slave for her mother, and so had Alice. Lizzie’s mind went back to the early years, during the 1920s. The houses were then referred to as lodging houses, and visitors brought their own food to be cooked to their own requirements. At that time there were no washbasins in the rooms. Hot water was carried upstairs every morning and evening, and each room had a washstand with a large jug and basin. There were no bathrooms, but fortunately there was a lavatory – or WC – on each landing. By the time the war started in 1939 washbasins had been installed, and the visitors no longer brought their own food. They were, however, provided with three meals a day: a cooked breakfast, midday dinner, and ‘high tea’.
The summer of 1939 had been a particularly busy one. The continuous sunshine had tempted record numbers of visitors to Blackpool and to other seaside resorts. Ada said it had been one of the best seasons she had ever known, but numbers began to dwindle as the rumours of war became a reality.
Lizzie recalled that the evacuees had been an unruly lot, apart from a few helpful ones, and they had been glad to see the back of them. The RAF recruits, though, were a different kettle of fish. They had breezed in like a gust of fresh air, bringing new life and a spirit of joviality to the place. Lizzie unashamedly enjoyed their company, although she had to watch her Ps and Qs under her mother’s eagle eye.
‘Don’t forget you’re a married woman, our Lizzie,’ her mother would remind her.
Norman had joined up early in 1940 and Lizzie realized, with a feeling of guilt, that she didn’t miss him as much as she should. They had been married for seven years, and Megan was now almost six years old. They were happy enough together, but Lizzie had never been head over heels in love with her husband, and she suspected that neither had he been with her. She had met him at a church social evening, although he had always been around with the rest of the lads she knew, and after a couple of years they had got married. She was twenty-one and did not need her mother’s permission. Lizzie admitted to herself that she was marrying partly to get away from her mother’s iron-fisted control.
They agreed that they would live in the boarding house rather than in a place of their own, provided that Norman continued with his own work as a painter and decorator and played no part in the running of the business. Norman was easy-going and usually agreed with what Lizzie decided.
‘It makes sense anyway, love,’ he said to her. ‘Your mam won’t charge us rent, and we’ll have our bed and board. Can’t be bad, eh?’
It did afford them the privacy they needed, and it was convenient for Lizzie not to have to travel to her place of work. Also, her mother was always available to look after Megan if ever Lizzie and Norman wanted a little time on their own.
Ada loved her granddaughter, and she was always more lenient and affectionate towards Megan than she had been to her own two daughters. After Lizzie’s marriage, Alice became more dominated than ever by her mother, and did not have the spirit that her sister had to stick up for herself.
Lizzie was relieved that Norman was safe – or as safe as he could be – in his camp down south, and she had adjusted to her life without him.
It was early in 1942 that Lizzie met Alan Whittaker. He was the sergeant in charge of the billet and therefore came into closer contact with Ada, the landlady, and her second-in-command, Lizzie, than did the rest of the men, regarding the rules and regulations and the conduct of the recruits. There had, however, been very little trouble. The RAF lads were pleased to have such a good billet – above all, good food – and they found the pleasures that Blackpool offered were a welcome diversion from the arduous training programme and thoughts of the terrors that might lie ahead.
The news had been grim for a while. Following the debacle of Dunkirk, the Blitz had begun in earnest. The Battle of Britain raged in the skies above southern England; there had been the destruction of Coventry, and London and other big cities were bombed nightly.
Very little happened, though, in the skies above Blackpool. The dropping of a bomb on Seed Street, a row of terraced houses near to North Station, had been an isolated incident, but it had caused several deaths and destruction of property.
‘Happen they were trying to bomb your factory, Alice,’ commented Ada, but the munitions factory had not been affected. ‘Or happen North Station just across the road. Anyroad, we’re all safe, thank the Lord.’
Alan Whittaker commented to Lizzie that it was probably a pilot getting rid of his last bomb, maybe aiming for – but missing – the sea before heading back home.
‘Although there’s a theory that Blackpool will not be targeted,’ he told her, ‘there are thousands of us RAF blokes here, and a few bombs could get rid of a whole lot of us. But Blackpool Tower is a good landmark; the pilots know exactly where they are and they use it to turn round and head back across the Irish Sea. And I’ve also heard that Hitler regards Blackpool as a great holiday resort for the Germans to inhabit once they’ve won the war!’
‘Fat chance of that!’ replied Lizzie. ‘Especially now.’
For it seemed that the tide had turned. Following the bombing of the American naval fleet by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, America had entered the war.
It had been feared, during the early years, that Britain would be invaded, that it was only a matter of time, but no one was allowed to say so. Defeatist talk was frowned upon and could be a punishable offence, although mutterings went on in some quarters.
‘I won’t have that sort of talk in my house,’ Ada had declared. She had asked Lizzie to write out, in her best copybook printing, the words spoken by Queen Victoria to the troops during the Boer War.
Please understand there is no depression in this house and we are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.
This framed quotation had been hung in the dining room where all the lads read it and took it to heart. It was still there a year later as a reminder that Britain would be victorious, and that, indeed, was now beginning to seem more likely.
Sergeant Alan Whittaker was rather older than the rest of the recruits. He was twenty-five, and Lizzie at that time was twenty-nine. He was tall and dark-haired, not conventionally handsome – his nose was rather long, and his teeth in his wide mouth were a little crooked – but he had a winning smile and shrewd grey eyes that could be either serious or light-hearted.
Lizzie often chatted with him when she served supper to the men in the evenings; a cup of tea or coffee and a biscuit for those who had remained in the billet. Many of them, of course, were out enjoying themselves in Blackpool’s many cinemas or pubs or the three ballrooms. Alan, more often than not, was sitting by himself engrossed in a book.
