Free All The Days of My Life by Hilary Bailey Page A

heard him call back, “Bye, love.”
    â€œBye, Sid,” she shouted after him and went back into the house. She bumped into Arnie Rose in the passageway and jumped.
    â€œCome on in, Ivy,” he said. “Don’t worry. Old Sid’ll be all right. What you need is to warm up and have a little drink of something I’ve got in my pocket. Let’s cheer up and keep the cold out.”
    Ivy thought that if the raid was nearing its end Arnie Rose ought to be on his way. She thought that a man with any decency in him might have offered to go along with Sid and help at the bus depot. But she suffered Arnie to lead her back into the kitchen, where he sat down confidentially at the kitchen table and produced a full half-bottle of whisky from his pocket. “And plenty more where that came from,” he remarked. Ivy took the glass he offered and thought to herself, “Please, God – keep Sid safe. Amen.”
    Sid returned as the first light was coming up over winter streets filled with drizzling rain. He was dirty and haggard. “Sorry, gel,” he said. “It wasn’t a direct hit – one of the sheds collapsed with a bloke inside. After we got him out I started helping in the houses nearby. We found an old lady in the coalshed but there was two little girls killed. Heat up some water. I want a wash.”
    Ivy filled a big saucepan with water and put it on the gas. She handed him a cup of tea and put two slices of bacon in the pan. “Poor little girls,” she said.
    â€œYou’re right about not bringing Mary and Jack back here for Christmas,” he told her. “I must have been barmy to think about it.”
    â€œGet any sleep?” asked Ivy, turning the rashers.
    â€œBest part of an hour in the cab of one of the buses,” he said. “I felt too tired to walk home. You look pale. You all right?”
    â€œI never slept much,” said Ivy. “Shirley was all right, though.” She did not add that she had spent nearly all night evading Arnie Rose. She had been too cautious to ask him directly to leave, or even call a neighbour to help her get rid of him. She thought it would not be a good idea to upset Arnold Rose. She did not want her husband to upset him either.
    Sid bit into his bacon sandwich and said, “We could all do with a year in bed, I reckon. I don’t know how much more of this we can stand.”
    â€œA lot more,” said Ivy. “You’d be surprised what people can put up with.”
    â€œCan’t go on forever, though, can it?” he said. “Families split up. Casualties. Raids every bloody night. Queues – we may not have had much in the old days but at least we had our homes, and a bit of peace and quiet.”
    â€œPeace and quiet to starve in,” said Ivy. “At least the kids are getting their milk and orange juice and dried eggs. People are being looked after, you can say that. That reminds me – Arnie Rose can get us a big,fat chicken for Christmas – cost thirty shillings, though.”
    â€œThirty shillings,” he said. “My God, that Arnie’s got a nerve.”
    Ivy said, “Get to bed, love. See if you can get a few hours’ sleep.”
    â€œFancy joining me?” asked Sid wistfully.
    â€œI’ve got to go shopping early to avoid the queues,” Ivy said.
    Sid went grumpily up to bed.
    Down at Twining’s, in Framlingham, Christmas was a jolly affair, in spite of Twining’s drunken tumble against Mrs Twining’s grandfather’s clock when he came home from the pub on Christmas Eve. This caused a crash and some shouting downstairs at midnight but the row was over by Christmas Day itself, when there were cries and laughs, big fires to drive off the country dark, and a fat goose from the farmyard on the dinner table. There was Mrs Twining’s mother’s famous Christmas pudding – “you could climb Mount Everest on