by Maggie Ford
His mother hugged him again in exactly the same way as they left, while his dad caught his hand in a prolonged grip and wished him well and to come back safe.
‘Anyone’d think they’ll never see me again,’ Harry chuckled as they walked home. He was carrying Addie. ‘We’ll be round there again in a couple of days, ’cause they’re goin’ ter give eye to Addie. But that’s me mum for yer. Always did wear ’er ’eart on ’er sleeve, me mum. She’s the salt of the earf, me mum.’
At home around half five they sat down to an early tea of egg and chips. It had been a gorgeously warm sunny day. Addie was fed and ready for bed, Brenda was washing up and contemplating them being alone when from far away came the familiar wail.
‘Oh, no . . .’ The words dragged themselves from her lips. She uttered them half in irritation at the prospect of lovemaking being interrupted, half in alarm that London was possibly being targeted again after the deceptive lull it had enjoyed.
Harry was on his feet, staring about. This for him was his first experience since Dunkirk of an air attack and it revived memories that showed plainly on his face. Brenda had to take his arm and shake it a little for him to recover his wits.
‘It’s orright!’ she burst out, but he’d already collected himself.
‘We can make it ter the public shelter. We ain’t sittin’ in that bloody old shed of yours this time, now I’m ’ere.’
She’d written to him of her experience that night in the pram shed. What she hadn’t told him about was the key Mr Stebbings had given her. In fact she had totally forgotten about it. Now she remembered it again.
‘No need,’ she said, hurriedly gathering up the paraphernalia she’d taken with her for that last air raid, plus a few more bits and pieces. Tomorrow they would make a corner of the basement more comfy ready for the next time, if there was a next time. Who knew whether this might not be another isolated attack? ‘I’ve got a key to the downstairs shop’s basement.’
He paused to stare at her. ‘Where’d you get it from?’
‘Mr Stebbings,’ she said without thinking. ‘He said me and Addie would be much safer there than the shed or a public shelter. They’re only made of brick. Yer might as well be indoors as there.’
Harry was staring at her. ‘Why’d he give yer a key?’ ‘He just felt concerned for me.’
‘What’s he doin’ feelin’ concerned fer you, me wife?’
A knot of anger made itself felt in her stomach. ‘Oh, don’t be stupid, Harry! Anyone would think we was ’aving an affair or something.’
‘Are yer?’
‘Harry!’ Hurt, shock and indignation streaked through her. ‘What d’yer think I am? How can you say something like that?’
He blinked, the tight features relaxing. ‘I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t mean it, love.’
Her own tension dissolved, but the hurt remained as she said blankly, ‘I know yer didn’t.’
But as the room was pierced suddenly by the nearby siren, she put her hurt aside. ‘Come on, let’s get a move on! There ain’t much down there except old books. Nothing to sit on, but we can use the eiderdown and pillows.’
‘I’ll get you and Addie settled down there then, and pop back up fer a couple of chairs or somethink. Give us the key.’
‘No, I’ll hang on to it,’ she said quickly without thought and heard him draw in a short breath, but he said nothing more as they hurried down the iron stairs and round to the front of the shop.
It was quarter to six; the sun, having given the southeastern counties such a beautiful hot day, was still well up in a cloudless sky, but that was all that was normal. Bow Road had come alive with people clutching belongings to their chests, carrying children, toting bags and cases, all set on getting to the nearest public air raid shelter. No one ran. They merely moved swiftly, taking no notice of anyone else.
Mr Stebbings had closed early as he often did on a Saturday evening, and had probably left only a few minutes ago. Just as well, Brenda thought, Harry standing silent still while she inserted the new key in the shop door.
They found the basement steps at the rear. A light switch at the bottom revealed a cluttered area in the fitful glow of a single naked sixty-watt bulb, with two narrow aisles formed by several racks half-filled with old books lying at angles or on their sides. Others lay piled on the floor, filling the place with their musty odour. High up in corners dark cobwebs gently undulated.
‘Not much, is it?’ Harry said in a tone that was very near to scoffing.
‘But it’s safe,’ she told him in firm, stiff tones. Holding Addie’s hand, she moved forward along one aisle. She’d never seen so many books.
‘Come on, we’ll find somewhere to—’
Her words broke off as reaching the end of the racks she saw a small truckle bed by a wall, a chair, a table, on it a small lamp, cups, saucers and plates, and several other items her amazed mind was unable at the moment to register. Mr Stebbings had set it all out in readiness for her. Turning to Harry, she saw his face, and blurted, ‘I didn’t know he’d do all this.’
For a moment he didn’t speak. Finally he said slowly with an edge to his voice, ‘No need fer me ter go up an’ get them few bits I was goin’ ter get, is there? Looks like he’s taken it fer granted yer’d come down ’ere.’
She tried to smile. She wanted to say lightly, ‘Don’t be jealous, love.’ But her better sense stopped her. He was jealous, no getting away from it. Wordlessly she sat on the one chair, acutely aware that there was only the one. Adele she deposited on the bed, feeling that in doing this she might eradicate the connotation the bed seemed to hold of some ulterior motive. Harry remained stubbornly on two feet, gazing about, coldly studying the preparations another man had made.
The sirens had died away. But now came the most dreaded of sounds: a low drone that was fast becoming a roar which even the basement could not muffle. It seemed to be vibrating the very walls.
‘Stay here!’ Harry commanded. ‘I’m goin’ up to ’ave a look.’
‘No, Harry, don’t go!’ she pleaded as what sounded like every gun ringing the City opened up in a deafening barrage.
But he was already up the stairs. Seconds later he was down again, eyes wide with awe. ‘Bren, yer should see it. There must be ’undreds of ’em. Like a bloody great black cloud, right over’ead . . .’
To prove his words, they were almost thrown to the floor by a series of high-pitched squealing sounds and terrific explosions, one sounding so near as to have landed almost on top of them. Brenda shrieked and threw herself on Adele who broke into terrified crying at being so roughly treated.
As more poured down, she leapt up to seek Harry’s arms. He in turn dragged Adele off the bed, pulling all three of them down to crouch together close to the floor. Compared to this, that night two weeks earlier had been a mild few hours of inconvenience. Her mind felt numbed by the awful din, her nerve endings seeming to jerk with each detonation.
‘We’re going ter be killed,’ she sobbed and felt Harry’s arms tighten still more round her.
‘No we ain’t,’ he muttered firmly, though it was impossible to believe as the uproar continued. But after a while the raiders began to depart.
Coming upright like hedgehogs uncurling after a predator has lost interest, they stood up, looked around. Brenda consoled her still-sobbing, still-terrified child.
‘She orright?’ Harry asked in a sort of monotone. Brenda nodded.
‘You?’ she asked and had him ask the same of her, to which she again nodded.
‘I’m going up ter see what’s what.’
‘No, Harry.’
‘It’s OK. They’ve left. Better see what damage they’ve left be’ind. Might be able to ’elp in some way, if ’elp’s needed.’
All she could say was, ‘Be careful.’ She filled with pride for his conduct.
But after a while when he didn’t return she followed, clutching Addie to her, glad to give the child a bit of air and to see the sun still
there, though now it had become reddened behind one vast rolling billow of smoke.
She found Harry gazing up at it and towards where it all was coming from, which seemed to be the whole of the souther parts with more to the east.
‘They’ve got the docks,’ he said quietly. ‘All along the river. Gawd ’elp them poor buggers what live there.’
From all over came the shrill ringing of fire and ambulance bells. Bow Road and the surrounding area appeared to have escaped any direct hits, but it was littered with tiny bits of charred wood, still smouldering, road and pavement blackened by burnt paper and sparks that had drifted over. The air hung thick with a stench of burning rubber, sugar, timber and leather, all of which combined to make her put her hand over her nose and mouth and almost gag.
Seeing her action Harry took her arm gently. ‘Take Addie back down. The air’s cleaner down there. I’ll be down in a minute. Just want ter make sure. Anyway I don’t fink it’s all over yet.’
The raid had lasted under an hour, but she was conscious that no all clear had sounded. A heavy foreboding lying inside her chest, she did as he said, feeling now that he could be right. And he was.
Shortly after seven came the now-familiar drone growing into a deep, inexorable, throaty roar that had the little family in Stebbings’ basement scuttling into what they hoped was the safer cubby hole under the stairs. There, as the multiple whistles and deafening crashes of one after another stick of falling bombs merged with a constant pounding of anti-aircraft guns trying to protect the city, the family crouched the rest of the night. In wave after wave came the Luftwaffe with hardly a let-up until Brenda began to wonder if anything at all would be left standing by morning.
Time after time her thoughts flew to her family in their air-raid shelter at the end of their little garden as all this death and destruction rained down. Dad had sounded so certain that nothing could collapse on top of a shelter at the bottom of a garden. If they didn’t receive a direct hit, that was. But with so much stuff being dropped, it could just happen.
With Harry’s protective arms about her and Addie, in the same breath as she prayed for each explosion to miss her, she prayed for them in that air raid shelter not to be harmed.
Somehow the hours passed. Somehow the brain became numbed if not quite inured to a din muffled only slightly by the basement, even to the terrifying vibration of its walls at each explosion. The bombers finally left as dawn came, around five o’clock as Brenda, creeping out from under the stairs, discovered from a little clock Mr Stebbings had thoughtfully left. It was the first time she’d noticed it. It was lying face up, having been tipped over by all the explosions, but still ticking.
The sweet sound of the all clear greeted them as they emerged to behold a pall of smoke and dust, smell the nose-stinging stench of smouldering wood, see Bow Road strewn with grit, broken glass, bricks, tiles, splintered wood and household possessions.
Further along across the wide road Civil Defence workers in dark, plaster-streaked dungarees and dirt-spattered tin helmets were searching a pile of debris which had been a shop and dwellings above, and again Brenda breathed a prayer of relief to a silent God that what had dropped there had avoided her and her family.
Ambulance bells rang wildly as their vehicles dashed by towards the London Hospital. Water ran in the gutters from the night’s fire hoses. People were going back to their homes from the public shelters, each hoping they would find them still standing, none needing the Civil Defence men to send them on their way rather than hover to view the bombed shop. They walked past as if it wasn’t there or with just a glance of sympathy. They had their own homes to view: the shattered glass, the lost tiles, the door that hung on its hinges, if they’d been lucky. If they weren’t, a heap of bricks and broken beams would pronounce them homeless.
It was to be like this for the whole time Harry was on leave. Of John Stebbings there was no sign; he took to closing early to be home before the air raids started with the sun going down.
One time Harry made a point of going into his shop to thank him for his generous gesture. But Brenda knew it was to assess him. He came back upstairs, his face set and thoughtful.
‘A bit of a charmer, ain’t he?’ was all he said, and after that refrained from mentioning him again. Brenda deemed it prudent to keep quiet as they went about using up Harry’s leave as best they could under the present circumstances with London now in the front line, by day going out and making the most of the continuing lovely weather for Addie’s sake as well as for their own. Most of the time though was taken up in visiting her parents and his, and making dutiful farewells to further-flung members of his family who had seen him grow up, for he would never be forgiven for not presenting himself prior to leaving home for some godforsaken part of the world. Each in turn embraced him, uncles and aunts respectively wrung his hand and wept over him while his cousins could not care less. Grandparents remembered earlier wars and, dry-eyed, solemnly bade him safe return with honour.
Three of their precious days had to be used up seeing his parents at his mum’s weepy insistence. Brenda weathered it as stoically as she could. After all one day had been to take Addie round there to be looked after while the two of them went off on their own, needing to be together before being torn apart for God knows how long. But it was hard to witness those endless cuddles, pecks on the cheek, an emotional hand laid on his arm when he came within touching distance. His dad was less demonstrative and his grandmother less still, deaf and in a world of her own these days.
‘Here’s Harry ter see yer, Mum,’ received an absent nod, and ‘Harry’s going overseas, Mum, might be years before he’s back,’ reaped a mumbled, ‘Yes, nice – cup o’tea, then?’
At each visit Brenda felt stifled. As well as behaving as if every visit was his last day on earth, his mum hardly ceased to bewail the battering they were all taking from these air raids. ‘We’ll all be dead soon, I’m sure.’
Her own parents, thank heaven, were more the stoic, down-to-earth East Londoners whom announcers and newspapers took joy in raving about to the rest of the free world. But after nights of intense bombardment, Vera’s face had been chalk-white and Mum had pressed Brenda to maybe move in with them while it all lasted.
‘The Anderson’s one of the safest places yer could ’ave,’ she said, but Brenda shook her head.
‘There ain’t no room, Mum.’
‘Of course there’s room. There’s only me, Dad, an’ Vera, now that Brian’s gone.’ Brian had been called up in the summer, now he was stationed somewhere up in Yorkshire. ‘Plenty of room. An’ I’d feel better knowing yer safe.’
Explaining that she was safe as houses in Mr Stebbings’ basement brought a tight expression to Harry’s face and she said no more on the subject. Mum noticed it too, giving them both a searching look, but wisely she refrained from pressing it.
Brenda and Harry popped in to see her parents only twice, mostly to make sure they were still OK after yet more nights of air raids, the neighbours who should have had more sense asking the now-inevitable but exasperating question ‘When yer going back then?’ as if leave wasn’t already speeding by.
By night they cowered in Stebbings’ basement, trying to harden themselves to the havoc going on above with flasks of tea and jam sandwiches which Brenda automatically made up each evening. She saw this leave filtering away; her hope of conceiving another child to help fill the lonely gap Harry would leave had gone by the board. No chance of making love with so much going on around them and Addie sleeping close by them. By the time Harry’s leave was up, his only thoughts were for her and Addie’s safety while he was away.
‘I can’t bear leaving yer like this,’ he muttered as, back in uniform, small kit ready to be heaved on to his shoulders, he hugged her so tightly that she thought he would crush her ribs, at least stop the aching heart below. But it continued to ache on, thudding with misery.
‘We’ll be orright,’ she told him. ‘You just be orright too.’
It was the worst feeling she’d ever known to see him go off down the road towards Mile End Station, going all through the same ritual of waving and waving as before. This time she knew that he had nearly not come back the time before. How easily a soldier could lose his life. Forget all the glory of wars through the ages, the proud wife waving the flag, sure of her husband’s return. Fear tore at her heart.
Again he’d refused to let her go with him to the main railway station, and in a way she was relieved. Of course she longed to be with him for as long as she possibly could but it would only have dragged out the inevitable, her throat hurting from the tears she would have had to suppress on a busy station. Now would come the waiting for that first letter saying where he had landed up, God willing safely. She would only know once it came. For now she must settle down and endure these nightly raids along with everyone in basements, shelters and tube stations.
Chapter Fifteen
Brian had been called up into the RAF, of all the services. Mum was fiercely proud, feeling he’d achieved something remarkable and making sure everyone knew it. Only ground crew, but he was safe, she made a point of saying, not up there in the air to be shot down as Brenda’s friend Doris’s husband had been. And in his nice air-force blue uniform he had all the girls around here dying to be asked out on a date by him.
‘One of these days,’ Vera countered darkly, knowing even if her mum didn’t what he had in mind with every single one of them, ‘my brother’s going ter come a cropper and get one of ’em in the family way. Then he won’t be crowing so ’ard.’
Brenda, having popped in to see if everyone was still all in one piece after another night-long blitz, laughed, but Mum bridled. ‘Oh, don’t Vera. Brian’s a good boy really. This war. The youngsters ’ave ter let orf steam.’
Vera said, ‘Humph!’ and went on thinking her own thoughts about Brian, about boys in general, about Ron Parrish in particular.
It wasn’t fair on her. You get yourself a bloke then he gets called up, leaving you to sit at home as if you was married or something. Well she was not married, not even engaged.