Keep the Home Fires Burning Read Free

‘They’re only children and its ridiculous to have them sitting there each Sunday like a pair of bloody bookends.’
    Bill Whittaker, however, knew only the half of it because, as the adults ate, the horsehair pushed through the fabric of that sofa and through the twins’ clothes to attack their legs and buttocks like thousands of sharp needles. That was why Magda swung her legs and shuffled about, to try to ease the torment that Missie seemed better able to bear.
    Missie was always neater and tidier than Magda was as well, as her mother and grandmother werealways reminding her. She stole a look at her twin sister. There she was, sitting as if she were made of stone, with her pristine Sunday clothes still neat and tidy, and her dark ringlets shining in the sunlight.
    Magda knew her hair wouldn’t look like Missie’s. Each weekday, the two of them had their hair in plaits because of the risk of nits at school, and Magda would marvel that Missie’s plaits never came unravelled and she never lost her hair ribbons. Magda’s kirbi grips, too, seemed to develop a life of their own and would fling themselves recklessly from her tangled locks, to be trodden underfoot and lost for ever.
    On Saturday night, however, after their bath, their newly washed and still damp hair was twisted into rags so that they would have ringlets for Mass on Sunday morning. This worked with Missie, but sometimes Magda’s hair wouldn’t co-operate. Her mother was always saying that she couldn’t understand it. Magda couldn’t understand it either, but she knew it was no use saying so.
    Marion hoped that war talk wouldn’t dominate the tea table but, surprisingly, it was her father who said in a break in the conversation, ‘They’ve recalled the Territorial Army from overseas. A bloke at work told me that his son was in France and had to come home.’
    ‘You never told me this,’ Clara complained.
    ‘I’m telling you now, aren’t I?’ Eddie said mildly.‘Tell you summat else as well. They’ve begun a call up of men aged twenty and twenty-one.’
    ‘Christ! That’s it then.’
    ‘Good,’ Richard said. He looked at his parents as he went on, ‘What you told us this morning about The Night of Broken Glass made me feel sick. It’s hard to believe that people could be so cruel and heartless, and Hitler’s long been picking on the Jews. One of the Jewish apprentices told me that they hadn’t been able to go to school for ages before they came here.’
    ‘That would suit Tony then,’ Bill said.
    ‘Don’t think much of what they tell me would suit anyone, Dad,’ Richard said. ‘You wouldn’t credit some of the things they say happen. I thought that maybe they were exaggerating a bit. Now I’m pretty certain they’re not. They had to leave their parents behind and haven’t heard a word from them since.’
    Clara had been astounded at Richard speaking so forcibly, but she recovered herself enough to say, ‘We are talking about Jews. They are little better than heathens ? and don’t forget they killed Jesus Christ.’
    ‘Not these particular Jews,’ Richard said with a pitying glance at his grandmother. ‘That happened nearly two thousand years ago, and they worship the same God as you. But, just as important as all that, they are people, the same as us, who feel the same hurt and pain. Someone must stop Hitler.’
    ‘It very much looks as if we’re getting ready to do just that,’ Bill said.
    His words hung in the air and there was nothing anyone could say for a minute or two, the atmosphere was so highly charged.
    In the end Marion said, ‘If we have finished shall we go into the other room and let the children sit down? I’m sure they’re more than ready for it, and we can have another cup of tea in there if you’d like one.’
    Clara got up from the table, grumbling about being shooed away before she was ready, and glared so malevolently at the twins that Magda said afterwards it was as if she was begrudging them