Birmingham Blitz Read Online Free PDF

his chair, wild at the knobs. ‘Gloria . . . Gloria . . .’ Not listening to Mom, who was trying to say, ‘Lenny, it’s OK, it’s just the accumulator . . .’
    Len sank back on his chair and blubbed, fat slugs of tears rolling from his eyes and his shoulders shaking as if there was an earthquake. ‘Gloria . . . Gloria!’
    ‘LEN!’ Mom bawled down his ear. ‘GLORIA WILL BE ALL RIGHT. WE NEED TO TOP UP HER ACCUMULATOR!’ To the rest of us, she said, ‘Listen to me. Gloria . Getting as bad as he is.’
    She got through to him in the end and he stopped crying, but his face was dismal. He spent the rest of the evening with Gloria in his lap, lying across his thighs as if she was an injured cat.
    I took the accumulator in on my way to work the next day. There was a cycle shop on Stoney Lane would top them up for you. I’d never given much thought to what was in them before, but I soon found out because the aroma of spilt acid in that shop made my eyes water. It was eating into the floor.
    ‘You got a spare?’ the bloke asked.
    We hadn’t, though I thought we’d better get one so’s not to have this performance every time.
    ‘I’ll be back for it after work,’ I told him.
    So, come the evening I handed over threepence, and it would have been worth a shilling just to see Len’s face when I walked in with it. Gloria was on again straight away in time for The Six O’Clock News .
    Those last days of August we still waited and waited. It was like being held under water.
    The groups of people gossiping in Nan’s shop were saying, ‘Let’s get it over with if it’s coming. Just let us know one way or the other.’
    It was a time full of instructions. Leaflets through the door, the papers, and of course Gloria, who took our hands and led us into the war, giving out advice and information as we went. Hearing the voices which came from her was like someone sat right there in the back room with you. And she gave us relief from it, letting our minds slip away into plays and stories and songs.
    The newspapers were different. On 31 August Dad brought home the Birmingham Mail . There was the banner across the front, stark in black and white:
    EVACUATION TOMORROW . . . BRITAIN AWAITS HITLER’S REPLY.
     

September 1939
     
    ‘Genie? can I come in with you?’
    It was before dawn. I could just see Eric’s outline in the doorway of my room.
    ‘What’s up?’
    He came silently up to my bed. ‘She’s sending me away, ain’t she?’
    I pulled the bed open. ‘Here – hop in.’
    ‘Ain’t she?’ His toes were chilly against my leg.
    ‘She thinks it’s for the best. You don’t want that nasty man Hitler dropping bombs on you, do you, Eric?’
    His tousled head moved from side to side against my chest. I put my arms round him, scrawny little bit that he was, and pulled the sheet close round us.
    ‘Little Patsy’s not going.’
    ‘But the Spinis are – Francesca and Giovanna and Tony – even Luke.’ My friend Teresa’s brothers and sisters.
    ‘They’ll all be together . . . I’ll be all on my own.’
    ‘You never know – you might be able to go with them.’
    But he was already crying, snuffling like a kitten, a hand pressing on one of my titties, such as I had.
    ‘Don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna.’
    ‘Now Eric – it won’t be for long,’ I kept telling him. ‘It’ll be for the best. Mom only wants the best for you.’
    I lay holding him, hoping that was the truth.
    Mom stood by the open back door with a packet of Players, blowing smoke across our thin strip of garden. I went out to use the privy. There were cobwebs under the roof, cut out squares of the Gazette on a string, and no seat. I sat on the cold white enamel feeling a breeze under the door. When I came out, a bird was singing. A thin mesh of cloud covered the sky but the air was growing warm. It was about six-thirty.
    Mom stood with one arm wrapped round the waist of her cotton nightdress, her bit of stomach pushing out from under