‘Get rid of it you mean, how?’ Kate couldn’t believe those words had come out of her mouth.
‘I know a woman, she’s a good woman, knows what it’s like to be unwed and in the way. She’s clean and kind and usually it works without trouble. She’ll do it for a few shillings. I mean it for the best, love, but it’s up to you, mind.’
‘If I do it will you come with me?’
‘I’ll do more than that: you can stay at my place overnight then no one need know anything.’
‘Why are you doing this for me?’ Kate asked, ‘you hardly know me.’
‘You’re a workmate, risking your life like me with this damn powder and all those shells stacked up in the sheds.’ She looked a little sheepish. ‘And Moira, the midwife, gives me a couple of bob at the end of the year for helping, savings I call it though God knows we might not be here to enjoy our savings with the Luftwaffe over Swansea like a swarm of bees round honey. They’ll hit Bridgend one fine day, they’ll find out we’re here and all these shells and things will blow us to kingdom come.’
Kate heard the heavy thud of boots. ‘The old man is coming, better get back to work. Thanks Doreen, can I talk it all over with you later?’
Bob came into the shed, his face grim. ‘Disasters all over the country. London got a good pasting from those blasted Hun—the bastards flattened some of those nice London buildings. King and Queen won’t leave though, bless ’em.’
Kate looked at him and he caught her gaze. ‘No slacking then, girl, if the Queen can get about in the blitz and cheer folk up you can do your job right? Now get on with it.’
Kate felt like crying. There was no need for Bob to be so sharp.
‘Go easy, Mr Bob, sir,’ Doreen said gently, ‘she just lost her man, Germans got him, didn’t come back from the front see.’
‘Bad luck.’ He said it as if she’d lost a penny farthing but Kate nodded and lifted her empty buckets and began to trudge wearily across the rickety boards outside in the chill of the evening to the shed where the powder was kept.
It was dark by the time Kate climbed on the bus and sank into the seat she usually shared with Hari. The seat was empty as Hari was down country seeing to her kid sister. Meryl was always trouble but it seems this time she’d been given a bad beating by some horrible spoiled-rotten boy.
Would Hari bring her home? Kate hoped not, Meryl was far too sharp a kid for her own good, she saw things most grown-ups didn’t even notice. One day she’d be a newspaper reporter or suchlike if she lived that long.
Kate stared out of the window and saw her distorted reflection, eyes heavily ringed with shadows, nose looking angular and over-long. She closed her eyes and thought of Eddie with pity now as well as longing. He’d been called up, been sent to what they called ‘the front’, near enemy lines. He’d gone willingly, a broken-hearted, disillusioned man because of her.
She must have dozed because when the bus jolted to a stop she opened her eyes to see she was back in Swansea. The sea stretched like a band of steel across the bay, no hiding that from the German planes.
The hills of Townhill and Kilvey were blacker than the surrounding skies, hidden, crouched in shadow but once the flares were dropped—those chandelier flares that hung so prettily in the sky—the town would be at the mercy of the enemy bombers.
‘You’re early today, Kathleen.’ Her mother was lifting the heavy pot of thick broth from the hook over the fire. The smell of bacon and lentils filled the little kitchen and Kate felt like heaving. She sank into a chair and put her bag, holding the remains of her sandwich and her canteen of tea, on the floor at her feet and sighed heavily.
‘My arms ache from carrying those buckets of powder all day.’
‘Well, a lot of girls are doing the same thing, my girl, it’s war work, it’s that or the forces, or farm work, at least this way you sleep at home safe and sound.’
Her mother poured her a cup of tea from the cherry-coloured teapot; it was strong and hot and Kate drank it, grateful for the kind gesture rather than the tea itself, somehow tea didn’t taste the same these days.
‘One of your friends called for you, that Jenny, the one you used to work with at RTB, she wants you to meet her at the ice cream parlour but sure, if I were you, I’d go straight to my bed after supper, you look all in.’
‘I’ll see how I feel later.’ Kate wondered if she could summon the energy to go out tonight and yet anything was better than sitting in all evening listening to her mammy go on about the war and how in her day it was all different, in the first war the men were men and they showed the Hun that the British were not to be ruled by anyone.
As her mother filled the bowls with soup and cut great doorsteps of bread Kate heard the door bang open. ‘Paul’s home.’ The warning was unnecessary as her growing brother barged into the kitchen. Mammy had brought him home as soon as the blitz on Swansea had eased a bit. Mammy needed her brood around her she said.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, take your time Paulie!’ Kate shook her head. ‘You’re like a homing pigeon—you know fine enough when the food is on the table.’
He scrambled on to a chair and frowned under his thick fringe of hair when his mother told him to go and wash his hands.
‘That girl wants to see you, the one you used to work with, said you’re going out with her, she’s coming for you about eight o clock.’ Mrs Houlihan pushed a bowl of soup Paul’s way and over her shoulder spoke to Kate.
‘You look tired but perhaps it would do you good to get out a bit, you been stuck in here for days and I’m tired of you under my feet.’
So that was decided then, she would go out. In a way Kate was glad to have the decision taken out of her hands.
‘Soup’s lovely, Mammy.’ She spoke between mouthfuls, preventing her mother from making any further comments. She’d wear her grey dress and her red shoes and that lovely red scarf Eddie had given her. Tears came to her eyes at the thought of sweet, darling Eddie but she ate doggedly and willed the tears away.
Later, arm in arm with Jenny, Kate tottered through the town towards Mario’s Ice Cream Parlour. Inside the huge blackout curtains, the room was bright, heavy with smoke. A couple of lads leaned over a table in the corner looking the girls over, much to Jenny’s delight. She preened and slid one leg over the other revealing a shapely knee.
Kate sat head down, not wanting to be seen. Stephen was among the gang of young men. She’d ‘been’ with him, let him into her drawers, he was probably telling the others about it now just like he told Eddie; they were leering and laughing raucously punching each other’s arms in the way that men did when they were excited.
Kate tried to talk to Jenny but they’d never had much in common and all Jenny seemed to want her for was company while she found herself some man to keep her happy.
To Kate’s horror Jenny invited the men to join them and they came hotfoot across the floor, pushing chairs into place between the girls. Stephen was beside Kate and put his hand in a proprietary way on her knee. She quietly removed it.
‘Don’t go all innocent on me now, Kate, you were willing enough that night outside the church, practically on a poor fool’s grave. Right juicy you were, too, a bit of all right, what boys? He pinched one of her full breasts, it hurt and instinctively she slapped his hand away.
‘You brazen bitch! Hot one minute and then all saintly, eh? What did I have then I don’t have now?’
‘You had fear,’ she said gently, ‘you were terrified, you begged for me to love you, you told me you were afraid of going to war.’
‘Huh! As if I would be so unmanly.’ He was scarlet.
Kate picked up her coat. ‘And most of all you had tears, you cried in my arms like a baby. I did what I could to help you. Good night, Stephen, and good luck.’
She walked out into the dark night and made her way towards home, glad of the evening breeze on her cheeks. She’d only gone as far as the middle of town when the air-raid siren scorched her ears. She stood still for a moment, frozen with fear.
Bombers droned overhead, searchlights raked the sky. She saw them descend, the beautiful deathly candles of light, and then she began to run to the cover of the nearest shelter and cowered inside, huddled against other frightened people drawn close by the twin feelings of anger and fear for what was happening to them and to their beloved Swansea.
