As for home, I put it out of my mind and told myself I had to be brave like the troops who were overseas and faced terrible dangers each day. My worst challenge was rationing and swollen ankles. I’d made some nice friends and had a clean bed to lay my head at night and my baby, who I couldn’t wait to hold.
During autumn and into winter, my stubborn streak served me well, forbade me to open the door of every phone box I passed and ring my father to ask if he’d changed his mind. He wouldn’t, I knew that really because my disobedience had probably tipped him over the edge. Hence why I couldn’t bear the thought of speaking to my mother who’d have sobbed down the line telling me how woeful I’d made her life. As for Clarissa, hearing her sweet little voice asking me to come home would have dissolved any resolve I had.
I did wonder though, what Father had told them. Had he stuck to the story that I’d been sent to work in Whitehall? Mother would have loved that, telling her friends I was needed for important war work and hopefully, in dear Clarissa’s imagination I’d be just fine.
And I was doing so well, right up until Christmas when perhaps hormones and the bitter cold got the better of me, that I desperately wanted to make some contact with my family. I’d been in the queue at the newsagents and spotted a lovely card on the shelf. A red candle surrounded by holly and ivy and the wordsseason’s greetings.
It was an irrational, spur-of-the-moment thing to do and as I’d popped the envelope into the post I didn’t think about the postmark, not until later that evening as I shivered in my bed. It was too late to worry about it by then so I told myself nobody would notice and put it out of my mind. I was more concerned about the pains I’d been getting in my back, that the mother hens at the factory told me were just my body having a practice. They weren’t though, and a few days before Christmas, my baby decided to make an appearance.
It could have been the horror of the night before when the German planes bombed Manchester and we’d been forced to spend the night in the shelter. We were on the late shift when the air raid siren went. The munitions factory was a natural target and as we made our way outside and then underground, being in enemy sights tightened the grip of fear around my heart.
Never had I been so utterly terrified, and I thought it would never end, but when we emerged into the smoke-clagged morning, and saw the devastation around us, we told ourselves we were the lucky ones. It took forever to get back to our lodgings because roads were closed, and the city was in chaos.
My waters broke just as I got off the bus, much to my embarrassment. Colette guided me towards the boarding house and made encouraging sounds, saying I’d better keep my promise and make her a godmother, and she’d ring the midwife the second we got back.
But the pains came quickly, and to my horror, so did the blood. Within minutes I could barely walk, and we had to stop so I could lean against a wall, anything that would hold me up. There was a pub opposite and Colette called out to someone to go inside and ring for an ambulance, and then it all becomes like a fuzzy dream.
My back of my legs resting on the cold pavement and Colette’s hand cushioning my head, her kind voice, the clanging of a bell, white coats, blue uniforms, the most terrible pain. Sleep.
CHAPTER53
When I woke up, I was in a little room in hospital and around me there was the most terrible noise. The air raid siren outside. People shouting instructions on the inside, footsteps outside my room, the sense of controlled panic. It’s funny how you can hear it in someone’s voice even if you can’t see their face. But I could. I looked to my left and there he was, my baby. I hadn’t even met him formally or if I had I couldn’t remember. I had to hold him and see his face properly, so I got out of bed, a herculean effort but I had just enough energy and determination to lift him from his little cot and lay him by my side in the bed.
While I waited for someone to come for us, because I presumed we’d be taken to somewhere safe during the imminent raid, I just gazed at his beautiful little face and stroked his skin. He was perfect. Like a little peach swaddled in a blanket and if I thought I’d felt love when I met my Robert, it was nothing compared to what I felt for my son.
I was too weak to walk, to find help or shelter, in fact it took immense effort to lift and feed him, but I remember he suckled, and it was the most wonderful moment. Just the two of us, bonded by such a primal act.
We stayed like that, huddled together for what seemed forever but not long enough, and when the bombs started falling and nobody had come for us, I held him tight and prayed that we’d be saved. I told him about his father and how brave and clever he was, and so the two Roberts would be closer I took off my locket and tucked in inside his blanket, heart to heart.
That little capsule in time, those few precious hours with my son have stayed alive in my mind ever since and sometimes in my dreams I can still touch his skin, marvel at the length of his eyelashes, count his fingers one more time. I always wake up though and he’s gone, just like I woke up and found we were covered in brick dust and debris, but little Robert was alive and after I washed his face with grateful tears I kissed his face in relief.
You know what happens next, from Molly’s memories as written by Beryl. I do remember parts of it but it’s such a haze because I was so dreadfully poorly. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was haemorrhaging, so Molly’s discovery when she moved the sheets is correct. When she thought I was dead, I was on the brink, and had I not been rescued I’d have faded away very quickly.
And this may surprise you, given what transpired afterwards, I can understand how someone untrained and in such a traumatic situation, no doubt suffering from shock, could make that mistake. Molly’s baby had died in her arms, and she probably thought at points during the night she would too. So her actions on that day I have compassion for, I really do. She thought she was doing the right thing, for good reasons.
It’s what she did later that I will find hard to reconcile but before all that, I need to tell you the rest. About the man who saved my life and gave me a new one.
After major surgery and many blood transfusions, I woke up three days after The Blitz to the sight of a doctor asleep in the chair by my bedside. He was the one who’d patched me up and, even though it was touch and go, he’d spent every moment he could checking up on me. Rory.
The son of a doctor, he’d followed his father into the profession. After they dug me out of the rubble, I’d been taken to A&E in another hospital, still holding the body of my baby in my arms. He told me, much later of course, that the sight of me had left him so badly shaken that the sister on duty had raised her voice and told him to snap out of it.
His young wife had died a year earlier from pre-eclampsia and while their baby daughter had survived, the guilt at not being able to save the mother of his two children had almost finished Rory. When he saw me on the stretcher, with who I thought was Robert, he made a silent vow to not let it happen again. He wanted to save me and, in many ways, he did.
Our whole family know the story of how, after I was released from hospital weeks later, Rory came to find me at my lodgings and slowly, whenever he could find time, made good his vow. You see, I was a total wreck, mind body and soul. Moving, talking, eating and as much as I didn’t want to, breathing, was too much of an effort. And it had as much to do with losing the two people most dear to me, as my father.
In one of my lowest moments, depleted to the core, when I’d run out of resolve and my stubborn streak failed me, I did a stupid thing. I rang home.
It was February 21st, 1941. Nine twenty-five precisely. I knew Father worked in his office every morning from nine till eleven, when he stopped to take tea with Mother. During that two-hour period he always took his own calls. The butler knew not to answer so I was unsurprised when my father answered in his habitual way with the words, ‘Chamberlain Manor.’ Ridiculous. That’s what I was and how I felt because I should have known what to expect.
‘Father, it’s me. Eleonora.’ My whole body shook.
‘What do you want? I gave you instructions and you disobeyed so I have nothing further to say to you.’
And whilst I stood in the phone box dumbfounded and expecting him to put the phone down he surprised me with a question and killed me a little bit more with the use of one word.
‘Have you had it?’
It.
