Birmingham Blitz by Annie Murray Read Free Book Online

straight,’ she barked at the girls. ‘You may be Morgan’s latest tarts but while you’re in my shop you behave like proper ’uman beings and keep a civil tongue in your ’eads. Don’t come in ’ere showing off to me. And if you want to come through and up my stairs—’
    ‘They ain’t your stairs, they’re Morgan’s,’ the redhead retorted, hand pressed to her cheek. ‘And there’s bugger all you can do about it. ’Cept move of course, and do everyone a favour.’
    Nan bunched her hand into a fist and the redhead quailed. ‘Don’t hit me again!’ she pleaded, backing off.
    The blonde had got to her feet by this time. Now I was closer I saw she had pale, pitted skin, thickly caked in powder, and can’t have been that much older than me. If she’d been thinking of having another go at Nan she changed her mind, knowing she’d more than met her match, and turned on me instead. ‘And what d’you think you’re gawping at, you nosy little bitch?’
    Nanny Rawson suddenly saw me too, and she didn’t like her family getting involved with Morgan and his women. She rounded on the girls. ‘Get inside there quick. For my own state of health I’m going to forget I ever saw you.’ As they teetered back in through the door she shouted after them, ‘Coming to him two at a time. It’s disgusting!’ There was a cheer from the bystanders which Nanny Rawson, on her dignity, completely ignored.
    Her run-ins with the landlord Morgan and his endless parade of ‘young trollops’ had been going on since she started renting the place nigh on sixteen years ago, and she and Morgan, a scrawny, over-sexed weasel of a man, were growing old together. When Nan first got the shop she was desperate to keep the lease and was beholden to Morgan for keeping the rent low. Now she’d been here this long she wasn’t going anywhere for anyone and Morgan knew he’d never get a better tenant. It had developed into a contest – who could hold out there the longest. But the fact that the only way to get to the upstairs was through the shop meant that Nan had had her nose rubbed in his preoccupations week in, week out, and even after all this time there was no chance of her accepting it.
    As soon as the girls disappeared it was as if nothing had happened. Suddenly her face was full of doom. Hitler. Poland.
    ‘What you doing ’ere?’ she demanded.
    ‘Come to see you, what else?’
    ‘You don’t look too good – seen your mother, ’ave you?’
    ‘No. Why?’
    She jerked her head towards the door. ‘You’d best come in.’
    Nan’s shop had seemed like a magic palace to me when I was a kid. You couldn’t see across the room much better than you could through the windows, there was that much stuff in there. She sold everything you could think of: sweets, kids’ corduroy trousers, balls of string, gas mantles, mendits for pots and pans, paraffin, safety pins, scrubbing brushes. There were glass-fronted wooden cabinets where I used to bend down and breathe on the glass, see my ghostly eyes disappear into mist. Inside, rows of little wooden drawers held all sorts of bits and bobs, spools of cotton, hooks and eyes, ribbons. There were flypapers, brushes and paraffin lamps from the ceiling, and shelves round the sides and across the middle.
    Nan folded her arms and stared at me. ‘You’d best get home. Doreen’ll need you. It’s your dad. Soon as the news came out this morning they started calling up the territorials – ’e’s already gone.’
    ‘Gone?’ I couldn’t understand her for a minute. ‘Where?’
    ‘Into the army, Genie.’ She softened, seeing the shock on my face. It was all too much in one day. Eric, Mrs Wiles, and now this. ‘He’s not far away. He’ll be back to see you. Come on—’ She led me by the shoulder, through the back into the house. ‘Your mother’ll cope while you have a cup of tea. It’s just as much of a shock for you as for ’er, though no doubt she won’t see it that way.’
    I