Birmingham Blitz by Annie Murray Page B

the gaslight, peeling back the shadows. ‘Kettle on, Genie?’
    ‘No.’
    She clenched her teeth again. ‘D’you think you could put it on?’
    We all drank tea while Len and I sat quiet and Mom chattered on about her job, my job and about Eric being away. She didn’t talk about Dad. I watched her. She was like another person from the one we saw every day – alight, talkative, a bit breathless.
    I had a good look at PC Bob. He knew I was staring at him but he couldn’t do much about it. It’s not that I dislike people on sight as a general rule, but I couldn’t stand him. I could sense it with them. What was between them. And I didn’t like it.
    He didn’t say much. Smiled in the right places when Mom laughed. He had a heavy-set face and dark, mournful eyes which hardly ever looked anywhere but at her. I knew she could feel it, that stare. I’m not sure he was more than half listening to what she was saying, and she was making less and less sense because of the charge his look had set up in the room. His eyes travelled over her as she talked. I think they were a sludgy grey but it was hard to tell in the gaslight. I wanted to get up and shout stop it. Stop staring at her like that. He was following her shape and she talked all the more as if to fight off the magnetic intensity of those eyes.
    When he’d drunk up and left, at last, the force of his presence left a hole in the room, like the sudden silence when we switched Gloria off for the night.
    Mom was in a dither, cheeks flushed. ‘You didn’t have to be so short, Genie,’ she said. ‘All he came for was a cup of tea.’
    ‘Just make sure the house is tidy when I come in,’ Mom instructed me at least once a day. ‘Just in case.’
    And he was soon back.
    I made tea and sat watching them. No one was saying anything much and all you could hear were spoons in the cups and the fire shifting. Mom looked down at the peg rug by the hearth, at her feet, then up at Bob. He was sat forward on the edge of his chair in his dark uniform, sipping the tea, giving Mom soulful looks. When their eyes met she giggled.
    God Almighty.
    ‘What about some music?’ Mom said in the end. ‘No Gloria tonight, Len?’
    ‘I told him to turn her off when we heard you come in,’ I said.
    ‘Oh, there was no need.’
    PC Bob was giving a quizzical sort of frown. ‘Gloria?’
    ‘Our wireless.’ Mom tittered again. I’d never seen anything like the way she was behaving. ‘Len calls her Gloria. Go on Lenny – switch her on.’
    Len lumbered to his feet and in a second there was music, something soft, violins. Bob sat there dutifully for a few minutes, pushing the fingertips of each hand against the other.
    ‘Better be off home,’ he said. At last. He put his cup on the floor.
    ‘Oh yes.’ Mom was sparkly still. ‘Back to your little family. Never let you loose for long, do they?’
    They both went into the hall, snickering like a couple of monkeys. It went quiet for a moment. I wondered what they were doing. I thought about walking through to the front just to annoy them, but then I heard her letting him out.
    When she came back she saw me staring sullenly at her. Oblivious to this, she gave me a wide smile. ‘He’s such a nice man, isn’t he?’
    A week later when she was due home from work, I left Len shuffling a pack of cards in the back with Gloria on, and went to the front room. I left it dark, pulled back the corner of the blackout curtain and slid the window open just a crack. There were no lights in the road of course and I knew I shouldn’t be able to see them coming from far. But the room was very dark as well, and my eyes were settling to it.
    Not many minutes later I heard them. I couldn’t make out the shape of them in the sooty darkness, but I could see the burning tips of two cigarettes, and I knew Mom’s tone. Their voices were low and I couldn’t make out any words at first.
    They came and stood on the front step and I was scared stiff they’d see