The Londoners

by Margaret Pemberton

  With a strength she hadn’t known she possessed, Kate hauled him protestingly after her; off the street and into her front garden; up the short pathway and then the flight of steps leading to her front door. Everything around them, even the ground beneath their feet, seemed to be lifting and falling. In the house, pictures were tumbling off the walls and as they sped through the kitchen Kate saw that the cup Miss Pierce had so recently been drinking out of, and which she had left on the kitchen table, lay in shattered smithereens on the floor.

  ‘Faster!’ she gasped again to Billy who had blessedly begun to co-operate with her. ‘Run faster, Billy!’

  Together they ran down the back-garden path and the steps leading to the Anderson shelter, tumbling into it on top of a distraught Miss Pierce and a terrified Hector.

  ‘Thank God!’ Miss Pierce said devoutly and then, as Miss Godfrey failed to follow them, she said urgently. ‘But where is Harriet? Why isn’t Harriet with you?’

  Kate pressed a hand against her heaving side. ‘She . . . insisted . . . on going to the . . . ARP Centre,’ she gasped with difficulty. ‘She’s a . . . volunteer . . . ambulance driver.’

  Miss Pierce closed her eyes momentarily and then said tautly, ‘Yes. Of course. I forgot.’

  She was sitting on one of the two long, low benches with which Carl Voigt had furnished the shelter and as she took Beryl from Kate’s arms she said, ‘Do you think this, is it? Do you think the invasion has begun?’

  Hector was whimpering in distress and Kate sat close to him, stroking him reassuringly, ‘I don’t know,’ she said as a terrific rushing noise indicated a stick of bombs falling perilously close by. ‘It may be that Hitler is just trying to destroy the docks and Woolwich Arsenal before invading.’

  The blast of an explosion rocked the corrugated steel protecting them. ‘That wasn’t the docks or Woolwich,’ Miss Pierce said ashen-faced. ‘That was only streets away.’

  ‘I want my mum,’ Beryl said, her lip quivering. ‘I don’t like these big bangs. Bonzo didn’t neither and he ran home.’

  In the wake of the last, terrifyingly near explosion, there came another sound. The long, echoing rumble of falling bricks and masonry.

  Mindful of Beryl and Billy’s listening ears neither Kate nor Miss Pierce said a word but over the top of Beryl’s head their eyes held and both knew what the other was thinking. Had the destroyed building been occupied? Had it been a house in Magnolia Square? Had it perhaps been the home of someone they knew?

  ‘This is a real adventure Miss, ain’t it?’ Billy said to Miss Pierce with relish, hugging his knees to his chin as he sat on the wooden planking which was the floor of the shelter. ‘Can you hear the guns? They’re our guns. I bet it’s the destroyer moored at Greenwich that’s firing ’em. I bet we ain’t ’alf giving them bombers ’ell.’

  ‘I sincerely hope your assumption is correct, young man,’ Miss Pierce said, greatly cheered by the idea that part of the mayhem was being occasioned by Royal Navy guns.

  ‘Want my mum,’ Beryl said again, beginning to cry. ‘Don’t like it in ’ere. I want my mum to stop the noise.’

  Before Kate could make a comforting retort Billy said cheerily, ‘If anyone could stop this shindig, our mum could. She ain’t ’alf a tartar when she’s roused. Grandad says she’d scare old ’itler ’alf to death and that if Churchill ’ad any sense ’e’d use ’er as a secret weapon.’

  Despite the gravity of the situation Miss Pierce’s lips twitched in a spasm of amusement. Kate was too anxious about the mental agony Mavis was bound to be enduring, not knowing where her children were, to be similarly entertained.

  ‘The minute there’s a lull we’ll run down to your house,’ she promised Beryl, hugging her close.

  Another thought struck her and she said to Billy, ‘Has your mum got an Anderson of her own or will she be in with your gran and grandad and Carrie and Rose?’

  ‘She’ll be in with Carrie and Rose and Gran and Grandad,’ Billy said confidently, ‘and with our great-gran and Christina and Bonzo.’

  ‘Great heavens!’ Miss Pierce said, diverted as always by tales of the Lomaxes’ and Jennings’ goings-on. ‘So many people in a shelter this size? They’ll be like sardines in a tin.’

  ‘It was a bit of a tight squeeze when we did it for practice,’ Billy admitted, ‘but it was cosy. Grandad’s fitted it up with all sorts of knick-knacks. A rug and blankets and a pack of playing-cards. He’s even got a guzzunder dahn there for Beryl.’

  ‘A guzzunder?’ Miss Pierce asked, mystified, aware that the drone of aircraft was rapidly receding and that the brunt of the attack was over. ‘What is a guzzunder?’

  Billy stared at her, not able to believe her ignorance. ‘A chamber-pot,’ he said with as much patience as he could muster. ‘One wot guzzunder the bed.’

  As Miss Pierce tried to stop herself from chuckling, Kate’s entire attention was taken up by the need to reunite Beryl and Billy with Mavis at the soonest possible moment. ‘It’s stopped,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’m going to make a run for it with the children. You stay here with Hector, Miss Pierce. I shan’t be long.’

  ‘But the all-clear siren hasn’t sounded yet! The planes may come back! There may even be unexploded bombs in the street!’

  ‘It’s only a matter of a few hundred yards and the sooner I put Mavis’s mind at rest the happier I’ll be.’ Kate took hold of Beryl’s hand. ‘Are you ready, Beryl? Are you going to run as fast as you can?’

  Beryl nodded. She’d been able to run fast ever since she could remember. If she didn’t, there was always the danger Billy would leave her behind.

  ‘Come on then,’ Kate said, praying to God that her judgement was correct and that the attack was either over or in abeyance. ‘Let’s go!’

  Chapter Twelve

  Though there was no sound of planes now, or of air raid sirens or anti-aircraft guns, other sounds, those of ambulance and fire-engine bells, filled the acrid air. As Kate hurried Billy and Beryl down the glass-littered pavement she was grimly aware that much of the noise was emanating from nearby Point Hill Road. Was that where the bomb that had rocked their shelter had fallen? Were people laying there now amidst the ruin of their homes, dead and dying?

  ‘Cor, it ain’t ’alf a mess, ain’t it?’ Billy said as the all-clear sounded and he surveyed Magnolia Square’s many blown out windows. ‘Grandad criss-crossed our winders with adhesive tape. I bet our winders ’aven’t been blown out.’

  Kate, too, had prudently criss-crossed her windows with adhesive tape as everyone had been advised to do months and months ago when black-out restrictions had first come into force. The problem was, in the year since the war had begun, the air raid sirens had never sounded for a full-scale attack. People had grown complacent, becoming accustomed to the fact that the war was taking place on other fronts, France and Belgium and in the air over Kent and the Channel.

  The dust of the freshly fallen masonry in Point Hill Road was thick in the air and as Kate breathed it in she reflected grimly that people would be complacent no longer. Now that Hitler had directed his attention against London there was no telling how frequent or how intense future air attacks would be.

  ‘There’s my mum,’ Billy said unnecessarily as Mavis’s unmistakably exotic figure hurried towards them as fast as her skin-hugging skirt and high wedged-heel shoes would permit.

  ‘Where the bloody ’ell ’ave you two been?’ she demanded the minute they were within speaking distance, her voice cracking with what sounded suspiciously like a sob of relief. ‘The bloody dog ’ad the sense to come ’ome! Why the bloody ’ell didn’t you?’

  As Beryl hurtled into her arms Billy said in a voice of sweet reason, ‘’Cos it was fun! We were on the ’eath and we could see the bombers, ’undreds and ’undreds of ’em, and there was flames shooting sky-’igh from Woolwich and the docks and . . .’

  Mavis, who for all her free and easy manner where Billy and Beryl were concerned, loved them fiercely and had suffered tor
ments as to their safety during what had seemed the eternity of the air raid, adjusted Beryl more securely in one arm and with her free hand gave Billy a vigorous clip on the ear. ‘Fun? With your gran terrified to death and Bonzo still cowering in a corner of the ’Anderson? I’ll give you fun!’

  ‘We was in an ’Anderson too!’ Billy protested before his mother could give him a clip on his other ear. ‘We was with Kate and ’ector and . . .’

  Mavis wasn’t interested in who his other companions had been. With heartfelt gratitude she said to Kate, ‘Thanks a million, Kate. If I’d known they were with you I wouldn’t ’ave worried, but as it was . . .’

  ‘There just wasn’t time to get them down to you, Mavis. By the time I came across them the raid was in full swing. Where are all the ambulances and fire engines going? Point Hill Road?’

  Mavis nodded. ‘Dad’s round there now, ’elping to search for survivors. If it wasn’t for not knowing where the ’ell Billy and Beryl were, I’d ’ave gone with ’im. If we’re going to ’ave many more of these raids I’d much rather be out and about ’elping people than sitting in a shelter like a rabbit in a bloomin’ ’utch.’ She looked eastwards in the direction of Woolwich and the fires raging there. ‘Dad doesn’t think the raid is over yet. He thinks it’s just a lull. I better get going with these two before the buggers pay us a return visit.’

  Kate nodded. She, too, thought another raid highly likely. As Mavis herded her offspring down to her parents’ house, Kate began to walk back home. She hesitated when she reached her gate. Despite the distant wail of ambulance and fire-engine bells no air raid sirens were wailing. Instead of turning in and hurrying up the path, she walked on, quickening her pace, heading out of Magnolia Square and towards the Heath. The north-west corner of the Heath was one of the highest points in south London and from it she would have an unrestricted view over the Thames and the docks and Woolwich.

  Mr Nibbs was hurrying ahead of her, no longer in a state of partial undress but wearing his Air Raid Warden jacket and with a tin hat firmly on his head. A few other brave souls were also emerging from wherever they had been sheltering, some of them covered with the dust of fallen ceiling plaster, all of them with the same intention as Kate: to take advantage of the grandstand view offered by the Heath and to see for themselves the extent of the bomb damage inflicted on London’s docklands.

  It was still not dark, but the billowing clouds of smoke rising from either bank of the Thames as it looped its way around the Isle of Dogs and coiled between the East India Dock, Royal Victoria Dock, King George Dock and Woolwich Arsenal, made it seem as if it was. At first sight it seemed to Kate that the entire city was in flames. Blazing warehouses filled the air with the stench of their burning contents: pepper and rum, sugar and wood, paint and rubber, the conflagration staining the sky a dull, magenta-red.

  Rows upon rows of terraced houses in the densely populated dockland areas of Bermondsey, Poplar, Limehouse, Canning Town, East Ham and West Ham, were a shambles of fiery destruction.

  ‘Poor devils,’ a woman Kate had never seen before said to her. ‘There’s not many of those houses have gardens and if you haven’t a garden how can you have an Anderson shelter? I hope to God they all made it to public shelters but I bet they didn’t. There wasn’t enough warning. Let’s hope to God there’s more warning next time.’

  As if on cue, and before Kate could even begin to make a response to her, air raid sirens over the entire south-east of the city wailed into life.

  ‘Hell’s bells, here they come again,’ the woman said, her face paling. ‘Bye, dear. It looks like it’s going to be a heavy evening!’

  Yet again Kate broke into a run, this time mercifully unencumbered by Beryl and Billy. Though most of the fires she had just witnessed had been on the far side of the river there was no telling what area this second attack might be concentrated on. Between Blackheath and the river there was nothing but the green open vistas of Greenwich Park and beyond the Park, on the river-bank, lay the Royal Naval College, an electric power station and countless numbers of wharves.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ Miss Pierce asked agitatedly as Kate scrambled down the beaten-earth steps leading into the shelter. ‘I could hear the ambulance and fire-engine bells and they sounded so near I was frightened it might have been the Lomaxes’ house or the Jennings’ house that had been hit.’

  Kate shook her head, sitting down on the bench beside her, saying breathlessly, ‘No. According to Mavis the house hit was in Point Hill Road.’

  The heavy drone of innumerable aeroplanes could again be heard and Kate felt her stomach muscles tighten. ‘I went up onto the Heath,’ she said, slipping her arm comfortingly around Hector’s neck. ‘The docks are alight. All of them.’

  ‘Then it will be worse this time,’ Miss Pierce prophesied grimly. ‘The fires will serve as target-lights.’ She patted a basket at her side. ‘I thought they’d be back and I’m afraid I’ve taken rather a liberty. I’ve been in the house and collected some articles I thought we might need.’

  Kate eyed the Thermos-flask peeping out of the top of her shopping-basket with deep gratitude. ‘You didn’t take a liberty. You’re a life-saver. Is there Bovril in that flask, or tea?’

  ‘Tea. I’ve made some sandwiches as well. And I scooped up a magazine and a book that was on one of the armchairs.’

  The sickening, now familiar sound of the deafening roar of exploding bombs nearly drowned out her words.

  ‘They’re targeting the East End again,’ Kate said tautly as Miss Pierce retrieved a copy of Picture Post and an Everyman edition of Jane Austen’s Emma and laid them on the bench opposite. ‘It must be hell on earth down there. The fires looked to be completely out of control.’

  Miss Pierce looked at her wristwatch. ‘The last raid started at approximately five o’clock and ended at six-thirty. If that kind of timing is going to be a precedent, we’ve an hour and a half before there’s going to be a respite. Would you like a cup of tea now? And would Hector like one? His drinking-bowl is in the basket.’

  The respite, when it came, was brutally brief. All night, until the early hours of the morning, wave after wave of Heinkel 111K bombers rained death and destruction down upon London, the dockland communities taking the worst brunt of the attacks.

  ‘Thank God it’s downhill from here to Greenwich and the river,’ Miss Pierce said more than once. ‘It’s the hill that’s affording us some protection. The trouble with the north side of the river is that the ground is all flat. I don’t think there’s one hill in the East End, there’s certainly not one as steep as the hill leading up from Greenwich to Blackheath.’

  In the bleak light of early dawn, as the all-clear sirens finally shrilled into life, Kate and Miss Pierce stepped apprehensively out of the shelter, not knowing what sights they would see.

  ‘At least the house is still standing,’ Kate said, seeing with relief that the houses on either side of her own house, for as far as she could see, were also still standing. She thought of the burning shambles of the areas close to the docks. ‘I’m going to the ARP Centre,’ she said as, with a very subdued Hector at her heels, she stepped into her kitchen. ‘The voluntary services are going to need every extra pair of hands possible today.’

  ‘Don’t go until you’ve had some breakfast,’ Miss Pierce said in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘It will only take five minutes and it will be five minutes well spent.’ She held the kettle under the tap and began filling it with water. ‘Do you mind if I stay here until Harriet returns? It’s just that I’m anxious about her and . . .’

  ‘You can stay here for as long as you want, Miss Pierce. You’ll be company for Hector and, when I get back, for me as well.’

  Miss Pierce carried the kettle across to the gas stove and put it on the hob. ‘Thank God the water and gas mains haven’t been destroyed,’ she said as she put a match to the gas and a small circle of blue flames sprang into life. ‘And you really can’t go on calling me by my su
rname, Kate. Not after the experience we’ve just endured together and particularly not when your father long ago began addressing me in his letters as “Dear Ellen”.’

  ‘Does he?’ For a brief moment, as they waited for the kettle to boil, Kate was momentarily diverted from grim thoughts to thoughts of a very different nature. ‘How often do the two of you write to each other?’ she asked curiously, wondering for the first time if a middle-aged, pen-pal romance was in progress.

  Miss Pierce flushed slightly and put three caddy-spoonfuls of tea into the teapot. ‘Every week,’ she said, deepening Kate’s suspicions. ‘Your father isn’t lonely in the camp. As you know, he’s helped to form an entertainment committee and he’s organized a library, but life in the camp is very isolating for him and he’s kind enough to say that he appreciates my letters.’

  As Miss Pierce was very carefully avoiding looking at her as she was speaking, Kate sensitively didn’t pursue the subject. But she found it interesting. To the best of her knowledge her widowed father had never had a lady-friend. That he might now be beginning to view Miss Pierce in that light was a quite startling thought. What if, when the war was over and he was released from the internment camp, the relationship continued to flourish? What if they eventually married?

  ‘I’ll take Hector for a short walk over the Heath,’ Miss Pierce said as the kettle began to steam. ‘I won’t go too far in case the Germans decide to bless us with a daytime raid, just far enough to stretch his legs a little.’

  Ten minutes later, warmed by tea and toast and with her gas mask canister slung over her shoulder, Kate set off towards the ARP Centre, reflecting that life was full of the most remarkable surprises. She also reflected that under the circumstances she most certainly couldn’t continue addressing Miss Pierce as Miss Pierce. From now on she would have to address her as Ellen. As her father did.

  ‘It’s bloody chaos across the river,’ Albert said to her wearily a little later as they sat nursing tin mugs of strong tea. ‘Daniel says that it’s taking the fire services all their time to keep exit routes open so that people can get out of the area.’